Matt Yglesias

Trent Franks: U.S. is “wholly capable, willing, and ready to use military force” Against Iran

Time for the debate again I guess:

Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) has introduced legislation emphasizing the threat of military strikes against Iran and expanding unilateral, extraterritorial sanctions against Iran. The bill declares “the United States is wholly capable, willing, and ready to use military force to prevent Iran from obtaining or developing a nuclear weapons capability.”

Among other things, it’s just false to say that the United States is “capable” or “willing” to “military force” to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability. Obviously, we could degrade their research program by blowing some stuff up, but that would likely lead the Iranians to intensify their efforts. But there’s no way to use air power to fully halt such a program. For all we know, bombing will accelerate the pace of advances by changing the Iranian political calculation.

Nuclear Test Ban Would Enhance US Security

Baker Shot, Operation Crossroads

Jessica Matthews lays out the nuclear policy we need. I liked this part on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty:

Since 1999, we have learned that a nonproliferation system designed against threats from states must be rebuilt to eliminate loopholes and to contain new threats from commercial groups and from terrorists.

Iraq, Iran and North Korea exploited a critical vagueness in the NPT that must be fixed. In 2003, the news broke that a multinational, commercial network was selling bomb technology. On 9/11 Americans awoke to the terrorist threat, and we have since learned of some terrorists’ nuclear ambitions.

But 20 years after the end of the Cold War, the non-nuclear states feel that the weapons states haven’t upheld their end of the NPT bargain: to move toward disarmament. They are, therefore, unwilling to discuss necessary new restrictions until they see movement. Ratifying the test ban is a necessary first step.

Hawks are very afraid of “rogue states” acquiring nuclear weapons, but also totally unwilling to see the US take the kind of steps that could create an effective nonproliferation regime. To square the circle, it needs to be possible for the US to use unilateral military coercion as the centerpiece of our proliferation policy. That’s why they were so eager to believe that Iraq could be easily conquered back in 2003. Now that the “quick and easy regime change” theory has been debunked, they’ve moved on to massively overrating the efficacy of unilateral bombardment of Iran.

Poland on Board for New US Missile Defense Plans

As predicted by neoconservatives, Poland continues to seethe with resentment at Barack Obama’s betrayal of their country:

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has declared his country ready to take part in a revised US missile defence plan. Mr Tusk told visiting US Vice-President Joe Biden that Poland was “ready to participate”. [...]

After meeting the Polish prime minister Mr Biden said: “We appreciate Poland has stepped up and agreed to host an element of the previous missile defence plan, and we now appreciate that Poland’s government agrees with us that there is now a better way… with new technology and new information, to defend against emerging ballistic missile threats.”

That was sarcasm, of course. Contra neocon bleating on the subject, Poland’s participation in the Bush-era scheme was always unpopular in Poland and the Czech Republic so finding an alternate approach is fine with everyone.

Mutual Nuclear Inspections Are a Gain for the U.S. Not a “Concession” to Russia

Verifiable reductions in Russia nuclear missile stockpiles are a large gain for American national security. In order to get Russia to agree to reductions in their nuclear stockpiles, we need to agree to reduce our own stockpiles. Reductions in U.S. stockpiles are a gain for Russian national security, but they’re not a loss to American national security. We have no intention of launching a nuclear first strike on Russia, after all, and there’s nothing we could possibly gain from doing so. But of course American political leaders don’t want to agree to mutual reductions in weapons stockpiles unless the reductions are verifiable. Even though conservatives seem, in general, to have no comprehension of national security issues whatsoever I would think they could grasp this point since “trust, but verify” is inscribed in the Little Red Book of Quotations from Ronaldus Magnus.

And, again, for us to verify Russian disarmament we need to let the Russians verify American disarmament. And, again, there’s no loss to us in the this. The United States isn’t going to secretly keep missiles on line and we’re not going to launch a nuclear war with Russia. A deal for verifiable mutual disarmament is a huge, huge win for America. But as Joe Cirincione tweets out, the right is spinning the deal as some kind of unilateral concession to Russia.

Give Up Your Nuclear Weapons Program Or Else We’ll Damage Your Nuclear Weapons Program!

I understand the argument that the United States should give up on diplomacy with Iran and then follow that up with a hysterical overreaction and an unprovoked military assault. I disagree with it, but I understand what it’s proponents are saying. But when I read this kind of thing from Jeffrey Herf in The New Republic, I’m really baffled:

This brings us to the one policy option that Tehran truly fears–and thus the only one that gives these negotiations any realistic chance of success: a credible threat of military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities by the United States, perhaps joined by Britain and France, or Israel. If the Iranian leadership believed that such an attack was a real possibility, it, or some parts of it, might be persuaded to change course.

The idea that the threat of a bombing raid that would partially damage the Iranian nuclear program would inspire the Iranian government to voluntarily give up the nuclear program makes no sense whatsoever. Suppose I wanted Herf to give me $10. I figured maybe I could offer him various incentives in exchange for the $10. But it turns out that Herf is irrational or whatever and hell-bent on holding on to his $10. Reaching into his pocket and stealing $7 might have some merit as a response. But threatening to steal $7 in hopes of persuading him to give me $10 would be ridiculous.

I assume Herf actually understands this and just wants to see the United States launch an illegal preventive military attack on Iran. But he thinks that conclusion is likely to be unpalatable to his audience. So the idea that the credible threat of an attack is likely to produce a diplomatic win serves as basically the sugary coating to make the warmongering go down more sweetly.

The Qom Facility and International Law

Spencer Ackerman interviews some experts on the subject of whether Iran’s Qom nuclear facility could really have any non-weapons purpose and the basic consensus is that realistically it couldn’t. If the facility is of the scale that we’re being told it is, it’s too small to be something any reasonable person would want for electricity generation purposes. The trouble, as I was told yesterday by a European diplomat with experience on the legal aspects of such matters (and on the merits much more hawkish views on Iran than I have) is that these kind of appeals to common sense don’t have any clear legal force in terms of Iran’s commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

You can look at the economic logic of a civilian project and make inferences about what’s really motivating it, but that’s not what the standard is. The good news (again in legal terms) is that the UN Security Council has more-or-less carte blanche to regard situations as a threat to international peace based on their judgment, so it’s not as if legally-grounded international action is hamstrung by these considerations. But it’s a bit of a problematic situation; the fact of the matter is that the NPT gives countries a lot of latitude in terms of their nuclear activities.

Tauscher Says No to Reliable Replacement Warhead

The Obama administration’s stated desire to get the world on track to eventual total worldwide nuclear disarmament starts in practice at the only place it really could start—the quest for a new bilateral U.S.-Russia treaty on bilateral weapons reductions. The Russians want such a treaty because in the short-term maintaining the U.S.-Russia nuclear equilibrium at a high level is a bigger burden on (relatively poor) Russia’s budget than on our budget. But the high equilibrium is a waste of our dollars as well, and it’s strongly in America’s interest to reduce nuclear proliferation as a general matter. But a lot of members of congress are queasy about the idea of a new treaty, basically because they’d rather listen to crazy people like Charles Krauthammer than see the basic logic of a win-win deal.

Josh Rogin reports on some of the negotiations with congress:

Senate Republicans are not completely unwilling to get behind a new nuclear reduction treaty, but they intend to bargain for concessions before supporting ratification. One key concession they will not get, though, is a revival of the Bush administration’s plan to build a new class of nuclear warheads known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead, according to the State Department’s top arms control official.

“I think there are a lot of people that still hope for the return of RRW and they are going to be sadly disappointed,” Ellen O. Tauscher, the newly minted under secretary of state for arms control and international secretary told The Cable in her first interview after taking up her post.

The RRW concept has some benefits if looked at very narrowly, but it’s by no means necessary to American security and would undermine the larger nuclear strategy toward which the administration is trying to move. Reviving the multilateral nuclear non-proliferation regime requires the United States to regain the confidence of non-nuclear states by demonstrating our own commitment to play by the rules. That means not developing new generations of nuclear weapons and instead moving forward on bilateral talks with the Russians. Press reports have repeatedly indicated that the Obama administration is divided on the RWW issue (with Robert Gates, in particular, being a fan) so it’s good to see a clear statement that they intend to stay on the right side of this.

Washington Post Rewrites History of Afghanistan Policy

Couldn’t we fight al-Qaeda in Afghanistan with a much lighter footprint? The Washington Post editorial page says no: “As for limiting U.S. intervention in Afghanistan to attacks by drones and Special Forces units, that was the strategy of the 1990s, which, as chronicled by the Sept. 11 commission, paved the way for al-Qaeda’s attacks on New York and Washington.”

Spencer Ackerman points out that the 9/11 Commission report says no such thing. On the contrary, it explains that the drone technology available at the time wasn’t up to the job (”In the configuration planned by the Air Force through mid-2001, the Predator’s missile would not be able to hit a moving vehicle”) and that special forces weren’t seriously considered (”no indication that President Clinton was offered such an intermediate choice, or that this option was given any more consideration than the idea of invasion”) during the period in question. One might also note that there’s no particular reason to believe that the Taliban would suddenly overrun the entire country in the absence of a heavy American military deployment. I’m not going to promise you that they wouldn’t—life is unpredictable—but anti-Taliban commanders exist with troops in the field and we could continue to support them in various helpful ways if we were so inclined.

It’s important to remember that these are all factors that need to be weighed at the margin. Grant that reliance on a light-footprint strategy makes the emergence of a safe haven more likely than would reliance on a heavy-footprint strategy. But how much more likely? And grant that the emergence of a safe haven makes a successful attack on the US somewhat more likely. But how much more likely? And at what cost? Compared with which other possible uses of the resources in question? Ever since 9/11, people have worried a lot about the threat of a an international terrorist group detonating a nuclear weapon in a western city. That’s a small chance, but with huge downside. It’s something we rightly worry about. But it seems to me that whether or not the Taliban controls a given patch of Afghan countryside has no bearing whatsoever on this element of the terrorist threat. Which should, I think, help us gain some perspective on what’s most important.

Iran Interested in Nuclear Talks Without Preconditions

Laura Rozen:

Iran’s ambassador to the UN nuclear watchdog agency in Vienna has said Iran is ready to talk with Western powers about its nuclear program without preconditions and based on mutual respect, according to wire reports citing the official’s appearance on Iranian state television Tuesday.

Who knows what will come of this, but I think it’s time to take yes for an answer and get down to business.

Maybe Underpants Gnomes Will Prevent Iran from Importing Gasoline

Supertanker Ab Qaid (wikimedia)

An international embargo on Iranian gasoline imports is an idea that Iran hawks like to bring up again and again. Apparently Iran, despite being a large oil exporter, is actually a net importer of refined petroleum products, meaning that an effectively enforced blockade on Iran-bound gasoline would force the regime to ration fuel. And now the idea seems to be back in the news as the Obama administration is discussing it with folks in Congress. But the fly in the ointment is that for this to work China and especially Russia have to agree to it, and I agree with Spencer Ackerman that this seems unlikely:

Why would Russia and China agree to such a package? And why would, say, the United Nations agree to a move that would push the Iranians to dare the international community to confront it militarily over a global economic chokepoint? The smart people quoted in Sanger’s piece make the case for the sanctions by saying that the Iranian regime is more vulnerable to sanctions now, after the theft of the June 12 elections exposed popular anger and antipathy toward it, but not how to make those sanctions feasible.

I suppose one question for the folks pushing this line is how badly do you want it? What are you willing to give the Russians to get them on board? The US-Russian bilateral relationship, after all, has many aspects to it. But the very same people who are most vehement about the idea that the Iranian nuclear program is a threat to civilization tend to also be the most vehement about the idea that we should admit Ukraine and Georgia to an anti-Russian military alliance, that we should spend billions of dollars on attempting to undermine Russia’s nuclear deterrent, etc. I would think that if people really believed some of the things they claim to believe about Iran, that they’d be more eager to trade some horses.

Russia and China aside, what I think we need to hear more about here is the Iranian opposition. In general, I’m pretty skeptical about sanctions. If it’s the case that the opposition actually wants sanctions, the way the ANC did during apartheid, then that’s something we should take very seriously. But I would imagine that if Iran finds itself short of gasoline that the security services and the governing elite won’t be the ones without enough fuel to get around.

U.S., Russia Agree to Large Nuclear Arsenal Cuts

Mushroom cloud over Nagasaki

One problem in the international realm is that unproductive conflicts between nations are exciting and headline grabbing, while amicable positive-sum interests tend to be a bit boring. Thus Barack Obama heading to Russia, focusing his summit activities on an issue where agreement was likely, and coming away quickly with an agreement in principle to hammer out the details of big bilateral cuts in nuclear arsenals hasn’t attracted much attention. If Obama had done something much less intelligent and gotten in a big, but ultimately pointless, public argument with the Russians about NATO membership for Ukraine or something it probably would have gotten more play. But agreement is good and conflict is bad. Leaders who seek agreement should be rewarded. And it ought to be noted that what’s been agreed to is a pretty big deal:

Arms-control analysts who support Obama’s determination to conclude a new START agreement say that the stated reductions are significant because they are realistic enough to receive the legislative-branch ratification required in both countries, yet ambitious enough to act as a first step toward Obama’s vision of a world eventually free of nuclear arsenals.

“They’ve hit the sweet spot in finding numbers that will be a significant reduction and likely to get the necessary support in their respective parliaments,” says Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a Washington foundation focused on nuclear-weapons reduction and nonproliferation.

The numbers announced Monday, Mr. Cirincione notes, amount to a 30 percent reduction in the nuclear arsenals of the two countries that possess 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.”

In other words, that’s a roughly 28 percent reduction in the total number of nuclear weapons in the world. It’s also a powerful signal to the French, British, and especially Chinese that the United States and Russia are serious about reducing arsenals and that the Obama administration really wants to pursue a nuclear-free world. The fact that the US and Russia contain such a large proportion of global nukes is, after all, a bit of an anachronism as in pretty much all other respects China has clearly replaced Russia as the number two geopolitical player and in some domains the European Union has set itself up as a more-or-less independent great power. It would be very plausible for the Chinese (and much less plausible, though still possible, for the Europeans) to decide they need to react to this situation by “leveling up” and building their own arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons.

Steps that give the Chinese confidence that they don’t need to do that, that the US and Russia are prepared to level down, will do an enormous amount to help build a more peaceful, more secure world. Not only in terms of the US-China relationship, but also in terms of India’s thinking about its nuclear needs and therefore Pakistan’s thinking and therefore the general problem of proliferation around the world. These reductions, if they come to pass, will be a huge deal.

Setting an Agenda for Cooperation

Red Square, Moscow (cc photo by Alan Cordova)

Clifford Levy and Peter Baker write for the New York Times that President Barack Obama’s top priority in Moscow is following through on an earlier informal agreement reached at the G-8 summit to enact bilateral reductions in nuclear arsenals though he “also expected to touch on the war in Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, terrorism and the jousting for influence in other former Soviet countries.”

These proposed bilateral nuclear reductions are an important part of getting the global non-proliferation regime back on track and moving us toward global nuclear disarmament. But the choice of priorities also highlights something important about Obama’s approach to world affairs. The US-Russia relationship is multifaceted, and there’s plenty of stuff we disagree about. And within the category of “stuff we disagree about” there’s a particular sub-category of stuff that it’s exceedingly unlikely we’re going to agree about. Most notable among these is Russia’s relationship with the post-Soviet countries. The United States would like to see these treated more-or-less as “ordinary” countries and insofar as is realistic absorbed into the Western European order. Russia, by contrast, sees them in much the way that the United States has traditionally viewed Central America and the Caribbean—at times nominally independent but fundamentally part of a Moscow-centered sphere of influence.

There’s a certain amount of sentiment in the United States that not only should the U.S. continue to disagree with Russia’s perspective on this, but that we ought to somehow elevate such disagreement to the very top of the U.S.-Russian bilateral relationship. The president should go over there, denounce the Russians, get denounced back, and then come back to Washington empty handed but full of self-righteousness. This is part and parcel of the phenomenon whereby people don’t grasp the difference between a pundit and a president. It makes a lot more sense to focus a visit on something like the nuclear issue, where U.S. and Russian interests are roughly in alignment and some high-level discussions stand a decent chance of bearing fruit.

Iran’s Political Crisis and the Nuclear Issue

Hussein Moussavi (Wikimedia)

Back before the Iranian elections, when it suddenly began to appear that Ahmadenijad might lose, hawkish Israel groups started circulating oppo information on Hussein Moussavi and the right more generally was preparing to build an argument about how there’s really no difference between the two of them. Then came the apparent fraud, and the politics switched to criticizing the Obama administration for not intervening more forcefully on Moussavi’s behalf. But Eric Trager, working off the older talking points, published a brief article Tuesday titled “Who Is Mir Hossein Mousavil Really?” arguing that he’s no good.

I think he winds up badly overstating the case, but I do think it’s worth underscoring that on the key foreign policy issues between the United States and Iran it’s really not clear how relevant Iranian domestic politics are. As Joe Klein reports:

In truth, the reformers I spoke with seemed as unyielding as Ahmadinejad, if more politely so, when it came to discussing what Iran would be willing to concede in negotiations with the U.S. They were adamant on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, which is permitted for peaceful purposes under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. None of them, except Mousavi, was willing to acknowledge that weaponization of uranium might be in the works and therefore be a subject for negotiation. (Mousavi told me that if such a program existed, it would be negotiable, but he didn’t say, and may not know, that it actually exists.) The reformers were unanimous in the belief that Barack Obama’s conciliatory words were not enough, that the U.S. had to take palpable actions before talks would be possible. I asked each of them what steps Iran was prepared to make for peace. The answer was always the same. “It’s natural that the first step should be taken by the Americans,” said Karroubi, the most progressive of the four presidential candidates. “We didn’t stage a coup against your elected government,” he said, referring to the CIA’s participation in the 1953 overthrow of the Mohammed Mossadegh government. “We have not frozen your assets. We don’t have sanctions against you.”

Recall that there are two issues here. One has to do with the construction of nuclear weapons. Iran is not permitted to do this under the NPT, Iran denies that they are working on this, Iranian opposition politicians mostly deny weaponization is a possibility, and Mousavi says that he would bargain about weaponization.

The other issue has to do with enrichment. The United States and Israel have been pushing the idea that Iran should eschew the enrichment of weapons-grade uranium. The Iranian position, which I believe is legally correct, is that they have the right to such enrichment under the NPT. Uranians will point out that Germany, Japan, and others have fully mastered the fuel cycle without having the United States bomb them or the international community sanction them.

I think the realistic hope for a diplomatic deal has been that the Iranians will be allowed to enrich, but that inspectors will be in place to provide confidence that weaponization is not happening. If you think about the possibility of political change in Iran, I think that makes a deal more likely in one sense and less likely in another sense. On the “more likely” side of the ledger, a more liberal Iran is less likely to just decide it doesn’t care what anyone thinks and wants to build a nuclear weapon, never mind the consequences. But on the “less likely” side of the ledger, I think that the more political change you see in Iran, the less likely it is that Iran will agree to onerous inspections to monitor their nuclear activities. If Iran becomes a democracy just like Germany and Japan and South Korea, it seems plausible to think that they’ll insist on being treated the same as those countries and basically just trusted not to break the rules.

The Gates Factor

There’s been a rash of interest recently in the idea of Robert Gates staying on as Defense Secretary for maybe 9-12 months in order to smooth the military transition and give time for his eventually replacement to gain some seasoning as Deputy Secretary or some such. Part of the calculation is based on the fact that there are various indications, including some of Gates speeches since becoming SecDef, and things like the Iran CFR task-force he co-headed before becoming Secretary that Gates’ underlying views are closer to Obamaism than to Bushism.

To me that’s all plausible enough, but it’s just very hard to actually know from sitting behind your computer. Before making any such decisions, you would expect the president-elect to sit down with Gates and actually assess what he thinks about various things and what kinds of policies he’d be prepared to support. This pimping for the Reliable Replacement Warhead is not only wrong on the merits, but at least could indicate that Gates wouldn’t be on board for Obama’s ambitious pledge to pursue steps toward global nuclear disarmament. Since this latter pledge has been endorsed by Republicans like George P. Shultz and Henry Kissinger it’s something that you would hope a Republican with a reputation for pragmatism like Gates would be willing to embrace and lend some bipartisan cover to. But since it’s also probably the most substantively important part of the foreign policy vision Obama has outlined, it’d be absolutely crucial for the whole team to be on board.

A Question of Priorities

NYT reports on the Bush administration’s escalating rhetorical support for Georgia:

Russia’s military offensive into Georgia has forced the start of a wholesale reassessment of American dealings with Russia, according to senior Bush administration officials, and jeopardized talks on everything from halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions to reducing strategic arsenals to cooperation on missiles defenses.

The use of the term “forced” seems odd; perhaps Russia’s offensive caused a wholesale reassessment but surely it didn’t force it. The administration could have concluded that such matters as reductions in strategic nuclear arsenals, curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and cooperation on missile defense was more important than maintaining Tblisi’s sovereignty over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Indeed, I would say those other issues clearly are more important than the Georgia conflict. But some evidently feel otherwise. Which is a debate worth having, but nobody’s being forced to change their mind about this issue.