Iraq and Afghanistan

In "the Persian Puzzle", mentioned here before, Pollock concludes that the most serious crisis facing the United States in its Iran Policy is the danger that Iran will become a nuclear power soon unless we act expeditiously. He rates the likelihood of the Iranians becoming a nuclear power in the near future very high. After going over the history of efforts to control the Iranian program, and outside efforts of influence the political process in Iran for this and other reasons, Pollock comes to several conclusions. First, the Europeans and the rest of the world are unlikely to step up to the plate with effective action through the IAEA, Security Council etc. They have shown by past behavior that they are more interested in trade than anything else. Second, the only really good way to end the standoff would be for a new government to come to power in Tehran. But as a policy solution this has two subproblems. First, we do not know how we could effectively cause governmental change. The Persians have such a pervasive suspicion of the United States that anything we might try would be likely to have more negative than positive consequences. Any attempt to support antigovernment or "liberal" forces in Iran would undermine their position, tarnishing their reputation, and perhaps causing their execution. The second subproblem, related to this one, is that a new, non-theocratic Iran might be as interested in nuclear weapons as the theocratic — as the example of the shah suggests. Third, invasion would be too dangerous, and we lack the capability to undertake such an effort in the near future. Attacks directly on the nuclear facilities, either by the United States or Israel, would be more feasible. But we would find ourselves quite alone, we would make the enmity of the Iranians even greater than it is now, we would cause the Iranians to enter into a no holds barred terror campaign against us, and we might fail to destroy enough of their program to accomplish our objectives. These considerations lead him to suggest a complex policy containing both carrots and sticks, attempts to change of regime without direct intervention, and so on. He does not have much faith in this complex policy, one essentially woven from the pieces of the other alternatives.

After this rather dark discussion, Pollock concludes with a discussion of how we might live with a nuclear Iran. He points out that we have learned to live with the other nuclear states. Iran claims that it wants the bomb for deterrence, primarily deterrence of the United States, and there is little reason to doubt this at this point. Once they had the weapon there objectives could change, but his judgment is that for the foreseeable future we would be able to deter any Iranian ambitions to aggressively use their deterrent. I find this cold comfort, particularly since proliferation is unlikely to stop with Iran.

To my thinking the best way to stop Iran would be to stop North Korea. States can give up nuclear programs, even weapons. We have seen this for South Africa, Libya, and several of the former republics of the Soviet Union. If we forcibly brought North Korea's program to an end, Iran might well see that it was in its interest to follow the same path. As Pollock suggests, while the world would condemn an invasion, or preemptive strike, on Iran, it would be much more willing to accept such actions against North Korea, just as it went along with our destruction of the Taliban. North Korea has a truly terrible regime that has been responsible for the death, torture, and starvation of hundreds of thousands of its own people. Its leaders are unpredictable and dangerous. To consider such action we must unfortunately wait until things have settled down in the Middle East, thus freeing up our military resources. We must also gain the confidence and cooperation of South Korea, a country whose people have a strange love-hate relationship with the north. Their opposition is also based on the fact that Seoul and a large percentage of South Korea's population is within range of North Korean guns, even without nuclear weapons. Before any attack, we might need to evacuate a large area of the South. Yet if we are serious about stopping proliferation, and this is the greatest short-term danger the world faces, we need to take effective action somewhere, preferable against a state that for other reasons should be brought down.

We have tried diplomacy with North Korea with even less success than Iran. But instead of a massive attack against North Korea's forces or nuclear facilities, we might combine threats with a campaign of subversion, an approach that Pollock rightly thinks would be counterproductive for Iran. Subversion would not be counterproductive against the DPRK because there is no reason to think that we would be weakening antigovernment elements in the regime or society. As far as the outside world knows, there are no groups allowed to exist in the North that are in any way antigovernment. We would have little to lose if a policy of regime change failed. Many North Koreans seem to know in spite of the news blackout that their government is unusually repressive. The number of people willing to take the risks associated with escape to China across the river remains high no matter how ferociously the government tries to block their escape. Last April's train explosion near the Chinese border was probably a serious attempt to kill the Kim Jong-il. This suggests that a campaign of this sort could just start something that we could fan into a change of regime that would obviate the need for a major attack.