Peter Feaver asks a question:
Why do people who say military action to destroy the Iranian nuclear program is too hard also insist that it will be easy to contain Iran? Why can't they acknowledge that it would be quite a daunting challenge to contain Iran? This would not preclude them from making the tough call in favor of containment over preventive strikes, though it might undermine the dogmatism of the argument.
Feaver goes on to engage in some pop psychology attempting to explain this curious tendency among advocates of containment and deterrence.
A couple things are interesting here. First is that the opening sentence of Feaver’s post reads: “It is almost banal to observe that the Iranian nuclear challenge is a hard policy problem.” One of the reasons it is almost banal to observe this is because everyone who opposes war with Iran admits that their preferred solution is itself suboptimal and leaves tough problems on the table.
Secondly, the only item on containing and deterring a nuclear Iran Feaver cites is an AEI report that tries to throw cold water on the idea. That report is probably not the best place to look if one wants to see how people who oppose war with Iran characterize the prospects of containment and deterrence.
For that, one might want to read one of the many articles that advocate containment and deterrence. A few, off the top of my head, include Barry Posen’s article, which helpfully deals with Feaver’s supposedly unanswered question right up front in the title: “A Nuclear-Armed Iran: A Difficult but Not Impossible Policy Problem.” Posen goes into considerable detail in the report describing the problems with constraining a nuclear-armed Iran.
There is my own offering on the subject, which includes this paragraph, and a broader discussion:
Although the preventive war option for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program is remarkably unappealing, the prospect of deterrence raises a host of undesirable consequences as well. A nuclear-armed Iran would likely be bolder in advancing its regional political goals, many of which are currently opposed by the United States. It could press for dominance in the Persian Gulf region, which could trigger further proliferation. It would likely attempt to cast itself as the font of anti-Israel sentiment in the Muslim world, and could ratchet up its anti-Israel activities.
Last month at the National Interest, Austin Long and Bridge Colby took on the subject, noting that “containing a nuclear Iran would be costly and risky.”
I could go on, but I’ll stop here. I’m not sure whether to believe that Feaver just doesn’t read very widely on the subject or whether he’s decided to purposively mischaracterize these scholars’ work. Nor am I sure which is more discouraging.
Comments
A more pertinent question is why we're treating the Iran issue as a false choice between bombing them or them getting the bomb. After decades (literally) of speculation about an imminent Iranian nuclear bomb, there is still no evidence of any nuclear weapons program in Iran. Our own intelligence agencies only accuse Iran of harboring an "intent to obtain the capability" to make nukes at an indefinite future date. Considering that already, 40 countries have this theoretical capability (which is inherent in having a civilian nuclear program) and that Iran has repeatedly offered to place additional restrictions on its nuclear program which go well beyond its legal obligations or what other countries have agreed to (including ratifying the Additional Protocol which allows more intrusive inspections, and operating its nuclear program as a multinational venture with the US and EU -- all these and many other Iranian offers have consistently been ignored, and the goalposts have kept moving) why do we insist on just assuming that Iran is out to build nuclear weapons? Answer: for the same reason everyone just assumed that Iraq had WMDs. The "Iranian nuclear threat" is nothing more than a pretext for imposing regime change, just as "WMDs in Iraq" was a pretext. The last thing the US (more specifically, Israel) wants is to resolve this issue peacefully whilst leaving the regime in power, so we are treated to constant scaremongering about Iran from our venal media and "experts" who are either pushing an agenda, or don't want to rock the boat lest their grants and fellowships and prestigious titles become sullied.
The amazing thing is that Peter Feaver's question is not reversed. Why to the people who say it would be difficult to contain a nuclear Iran seem to believe that containment would be more costly? People who make this argument simply were not paying attention in two phases of recent history: first, when a vastly more dangerous Soviet Union was successfully contained for decades, leading to a final peaceful end, and second, when containment was dismissed as "too expensive" at ten or twelve billion dollars a year, and the US instead incurred an expense of somewhere beyond three trillion dollars in Iraq.We have very recent history to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt not only that containment is possible, but that war is a thousand times more expensive, even aside from the hardly mentioned prospect of the destruction of US moral credibility, possibly forever, if the US does in fact go ahead with this.What will be the response of the world if the US does go ahead and strip Iran of their peaceful nuclear program without a shred of evidence that the program has a military dimension? What will be the response of the world if the US and its Israeli ally attack an operating nuclear reactor and deliberately and willfully create a Fukishima-level event, and irradiate half of southern Asia, rendering large areas uninhabitable for generations, killing untold hundreds of thousands- purely on the basis of paranoia?What is in prospect will amount to one of the great crimes in world history. We're talking about rivalling what the Germans did to the Jews here.Compared to the prospect of instantly placing America on a page with that kind of company for all eternity- can anyone seriously suggest that the cost of containment would be comparable?