Earth’s Hotspots
April 12th, 2006Iran is “the Cuban Missile Crisis in slow motion,” and when you read news like this, it’s hard to disagree.
The administration insists that it wants diplomacy to do the preemption, even as its military planners are studying how to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities if diplomacy should fail. Iran, meanwhile, is pursuing its own version of preemption, announcing yesterday that it has begun enriching uranium — a crucial first step toward making a bomb. Neither side wants war — who in his right mind would? — but both frame choices in ways that make war increasingly likely.
[…]What worries me is that the relevant historical analogy may not be the 1962 war that didn’t happen, but World War I, which did. The march toward war in 1914 resulted from the tight interlocking of alliances, obligations, perceived threats and strategic miscalculations. The British historian Niall Ferguson argued in his book “The Pity of War” that Britain’s decision to enter World War I was a gross error of judgment that cost that nation its empire.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, makes a similar argument about Iran. “I think of war with Iran as the ending of America’s present role in the world,” he told me this week. “Iraq may have been a preview of that, but it’s still redeemable if we get out fast. In a war with Iran, we’ll get dragged down for 20 or 30 years. The world will condemn us. We will lose our position in the world.”
Brzezinski urges President Bush to slow down and think carefully about his options — rather than rushing to stop Iran’s nuclear program, which by most estimates is five to 10 years away from building a bomb, even after yesterday’s announcement. “Time is on our side,” says Brzezinski. “The mullahs aren’t the future of Iran, they’re the past.” As the United States carefully weighs its options, there is every likelihood that the strategic picture will improve.
First, I think Brzezinski is wrong and I wonder what hole in the ground he’s been living in since the Carter Administration ended because he seems addled. He can’t possibly be seriously saying that a War with Iran would last twenty years. I know the summer of 1979 must’ve felt like forever to him and his cohorts, but that wasn’t twenty years, bubba, and neither would a war with Iran last that long. Historically, too, he’s wrong. In the face of American power, Iran has backed away in the past. We could look to the year 1996, the CIA, President Clinton and Iran to see that. If we went to War with Iran at a time when they didn’t have nukes — and that is the only scenario in which we would War with them — it certainly could not reasonably be expected to last twenty years.
Next, I’m cynical about the statement about the Mullahs being the past. As far as I can see, the Mullahs of Iran are the past, the present and the future of Iran. They’ve been in power for a brief amount of time and I can’t see anything above the surface equalling a substantial level of dissent and opposition of the government in Tehran. I know the Bush Administration and most Washington Insiders believe that the Iranian public are willing to turn on the Mullahs, but I’ve seen nothing to that effect. The Mullahs do not commit the crimes of Saddam Hussein against his own people, for one thing. For another, as we saw with Iraq — and, for now, let’s concede that Iranians hate their government — a distaste for your own government doesn’t mean, by itself, that the public will welcome a new government that is inspired by an international poke with open arms.
According to Seymour Hersh, White House staffers and George W. Bush have taken to calling the Iranian President “Hitler,” but I think the World War I example is far more apt. With the way that the World is aligning, with Russia and China joining with each other and sleeping in Tehran, with the EU splitting between a hawkish stance on Iran and their traditional pacifist past, with America’s involvement in Iraq, I can see a World War I scenario unfolding, and it’s a shame that the Iranians are pushing us to the brink of that. The Iranians are putting the truth out by enriching Uranium, and it should be clear to anyone with half a brain that their program isn’t peaceful.
It’s a tough time to be President, and, as the article points out, the White House is going to have to seek out creative solutions and be flexible.
On the other side of the world, there’s Russia and the Ukraine, two hotspots that are warming up again. The divide between Russia and America is widening, partly because of Iran and partly because of Putin’s callous disregard for the basic rights of human beings. I think the “divide” between America and Russia is overstated. Putin has never been George Bush’s trusted ally although he has pretended to be, and Russia won’t be a true beacon of Democracy for a long time.
Anne Applebaum is one of my favorite columnists because she’s one of the few to focus on Russia and the Ukraine, and here she is today, conducting an interview with the Ukrainian President and writing at length about that country’s future. I do hope America sticks with the Ukraine as it’s in our best interest and the right thing to do.