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Upping the
ante in a deadly nuclear game
By
William R Polk
(Republished with
permission from Japan Focus)
Note: North Korea at the
weekend said that it would return to the six-party
talks on its nuclear program as "the US side
clarified its official stand to recognize the DPRK
[Democratic People's Republic of Korea] as a
sovereign state, not to invade it, and hold
bilateral talks within the framework of the
six-party talks". It is expected that the talks,
which will also involve China, Russia, Japan, the
US and South Korea, will be held sometime this
month in Beijing, where the first three rounds of
talks were staged more than a year ago.
The Guardian of June 9 reported the
disappearance from the International Atomic Energy
Agency of a set or sets of detailed engineering
plans for making nuclear materials and weapons of
mass destruction (WMD). While there never have
been any significant scientific secrets on the
nuclear bomb, there has been somewhat restricted
engineering information that would enable others
to speed up, make more cheaply and avoid obvious
tell-tale  aspects of
acquisition. Now we must assume that production
information is widely available.
It
appears that this is a more important stage in the
increasing insecurity of the world than may have
been realized. Perhaps one sign of this lack of
recognition is that, to the best of this author's
knowledge, the story of the disappearance of the
engineering data did not appear in The New York
Times, The Washington Post or other major American
newspapers. Yet, the presumed availability of this
information moves us, potentially at least, into a
dangerous new phase of the spread of WMD: what was
once only theoretical, the so-called "nth nation"
threat – "the proliferation of nuclear weapons to
an indeterminate but increasingly significant
number of states that now do not have them" - is
or soon might be a reality. Worse, the "classical"
definition of the "nth nation" must now be
redefined as the "nth group" since we have to
assume that whether or not they now can acquire
nuclear weapons, circumstances are likely to arise
soon in which groups that are not nation-states
will be able to do so.
It follows that
whatever the United States government is now doing
to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons is not
working. Indeed, US decision to revert to building
a bigger, more flexible (read "usable") and more
integrated nuclear force - that is a nuclear force
that is not just a last resort but one that is
considered an integral part of America's "normal"
or on-going security policy - and the decision to
pull back from treaties aimed at stopping testing
and cutting back inventories of weapons are
pushing the world away from "security" toward
Armageddon.
In 1968, the US negotiated the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in which it
pledged to work toward the elimination of nuclear
weapons, yet today, almost 40 years later, the US
maintains approximately 8,000 nuclear weapons,
some 2,000 of which are on a "hair trigger alert";
that is, President George W Bush could launch them
within 15 minutes. And it has announced plans to
add to these existing weapons. In 2004, the US
government voted against reaffirming the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which it apparently
felt restricted its announced intention to develop
a range of new weapons, including what Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld outlined in a Senate
hearing as a "robust nuclear earth penetrator".
Numerous other pronouncements cover
"up-grading" the main nuclear force, putting
weapons in outer space, etc. Former secretary of
defense Robert McNamara has characterized this
policy as "immoral, illegal, militarily
unnecessary and dreadfully dangerous".
Subsidiary to the NPT is the 1970
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that was extended
indefinitely in 1995. The purpose of this treaty
was to block an important step in the process of
building bombs. To give itself the scope to test
its own weapons, the Bush administration has
decided not to be bound by this treaty. And, while
the administration announced a partial reduction
of its 5,300 "operationally deployed nuclear
warheads", it merely moved these to a reserve
category rather than destroying them. Thus, it has
set an example which presumably other nations will
follow.
The good news in this somber
picture is that, as former assistant secretary of
defense Ashton Carter pointed out, the US helped
to dissuade Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan
and Turkey from going "nuclear". However, this
abstinence may be only temporary. Since Carter
wrote his account it was revealed that at least
Japan, South Korea and Taiwan had carried
experiments to the point that they could quickly
"weaponize" their stocks of nuclear materials.
The US cannot be blamed for the spread of
nuclear weapons to China, India and Pakistan, each
of which had "regional" reasons to acquire
weapons, nor can it claim credit for the decision
of Argentina, Brazil and South Africa to renounce
nuclear weapons. They did so, apparently, because
they had no regional rivals against whom they
needed protection. Carter asserts, "A peaceful and
just world order led by the United States is the
reason why only a few of the world's nearly 200
nations are proliferation 'rogues'." This may have
been true in the past, but more recently America's
failure to carry out the obligation it assumed in
the NPT to work toward a world-wide reduction of
weapons, its decision to push ahead with its own
weapons program in violation of the treaty, its
preparations to resume testing, its invasion of
Iraq (allegedly to stop nuclear weapons
development) and its threats to other countries,
have undoubtedly accentuated rather than
diminished the clear and present danger in which
today we live.
Since we have lived under
the nuclear threat for over half a century, many
of us have probably put out of our minds just what
a nuclear bomb can do. Having myself participated
in the US government "Crisis Management Committee"
during Cuban missile crisis, taken part in the war
games and other studies subsequent to it and
discussed with my Russian counterparts the details
of nuclear war, that memory is still painfully
vivid to me. But in case it is not for others, let
me briefly open one small window on it. The 2000
Report of the International Physicians for the
Prevention of Nuclear War, which McNamara quotes,
gives the result of the explosion of just one
small (one-megaton) weapon:
A crater as deep as a football field is long
and as large as about 40 or 50 football
fields
A fireball that immediately kills all life
within a considerably larger area and severely or
lethally burns everyone within about 3
miles
All or most buildings flattened within about
12 miles. Those effects are virtually
instantaneous
Hundreds of thousands or millions more people
will quickly be incinerated in resulting
firestorms
Such survivors as there may be, would be
burned, without any means of medical attention;
starving, without any succor; terrified, without
any hope, and will soon be struck down by
radiation.
Such a small modern bomb is
roughly 70 times the power of the bombs that
destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One would
utterly destroy most cities. Used in numbers they
would destroy whole civilizations.
In
addition to the huge inventories of the US and
Russia (totaling 8,000 to 10,000 warheads),
Britain, France, Israel and China each have at
least 200 and perhaps twice or three times that
number; India and Pakistan may each have 100 and
North Korea is believed to have six comparable
bombs.
After a certain point, numbers
cease to have much strategic meaning. As I have
shown above, the horror that would be produced by
the explosion of even one small bomb makes
military action virtually unthinkable against any
nuclear state. Unthinkable, that is, except as a
deterrent or when a truly "rogue" government is
prepared to commit suicide and lose hundreds of
thousands or millions of its citizens.
So,
in strategic terms, acquisition of even half a
dozen weapons gives the holder virtual immunity
from attack. Thus, regimes that fear attack can be
expected either to attempt to acquire nuclear
weapons or at least to give themselves the option
to do so in case of need. That is the pressing
issue we face today.
Acquiring weapons is
not, of course, the same as using them, although
America sometimes does not draw that distinction
in evaluating the presumed intentions of other
states. So what does the Bush administration tell
us of its intentions? The latest expose of its
military policy is the March 2005 National Defense
Strategy of the United States of America. [1] It
proclaims that "America is a nation at war" and
warns that "at the direction of the president, we
will defeat adversaries at the time, place, and in
the manner of our choosing ..."
The
strategy paper posits an array of "challenges"
that the American government holds to be the
modern equivalents to "traditional military
action". [2] (That is, "aggression" as defined in
international law) These include "catastrophic
challenges [which] involve the acquisition,
possession and use of WMD or methods producing WMD
like effects [and] disruptive challenges [which]
may come from adversaries who develop and use
breakthrough technologies to negate current US
advantages in key operational domains."
Three things in this statement immediately
stand out: first, America regards these
"challenges", including seeking a deterrent to
attack as tantamount to attack; second, the paper
indicates America's determination to project its
current "advantages" to "key operational domains"
which in light of other pronouncements and actions
effectively encompass the whole world; and, third,
the administration publicized – even on the
Internet - what in my time in government would
have been regarded as a top-secret national policy
paper.
Putting these three points
together, it is clear that the pronouncement is
not so much a policy directive as a warning to
actual or potential rivals or enemies. Translated,
it means that states that move toward parity with
the US even in their own neighborhoods (as the
paper puts it, "evolve into capable regional
rivals or enemies") are in danger of being
attacked. Lest there be any doubt, the paper
proclaims that "Proliferation of WMD technology
and expertise makes contending with catastrophic
challenges an urgent priority [and we will acquire
means] ... when necessary to defeat them before
they can be employed ... when deterrence fails or
efforts short of military action do not forestall
gathering threats, the United States will employ
military power ... In all cases, we will seek to
seize the initiative and dictate the tempo,
timing, and direction of military operations ...
These include preventive actions ..."
States that have been told they are in the
target zone have included Iraq, Iran, North Korea
and Syria. Iraq has been, at least for the time
being, eliminated as an extra-territorial
challenge although, of course, it remains a major
adversary to American policy domestically and
Syria is at least temporarily in less imminent
threat.
Since the president's 2002 "axis
of evil" speech, the list of enemy nations has
been expanded to include Cuba, Belarus, Myanmar
and Zimbabwe. Current attention is focused on
North Korea and Iran. What is being planned or
prepared to deal with them are among the most
critical issues facing our country, but I do not
find that they have been given the careful
attention they deserve. Here I will briefly look
at what has been happening in and to North Korea
and Iran and attempt to evaluate how developments
fit what I think is the evolving pattern. Finally,
I will draw the policy implications and suggest
what Americans might do to enhance their security
in light of them. I begin with North Korea.
Target: North Korea
In my
government and business experience, I learned that
it is often useful to imagine oneself on "the
other side of the table" and to try to think (or
as war gamers put it, "program") what motivates
the other fellow, what he is likely to do and what
effect his doing it would have on those on our
side of the table. So I will try to think as
though I were a North Korean policy planner or
intelligence analyst for the next few minutes.
What has shaped North Koreans may not be familiar
to everyone so I begin by identifying what I
assume are the things have created their
"mindset".
North Korea was first invaded
by Japan in 1592. Using the first "weapon of mass
destruction", the newly invented gun, the Japanese
overwhelmed the Koreans, who then had only bows
and arrows. Though that invasion ultimately
failed, Korea was annexed to Japan in 1910 and
spent much of the next half-century under a brutal
and degrading occupation. In the North in the late
1930s, an anti-Japanese movement under a former
student at an American Christian mission, Kim
il-Sung, waged guerrilla war on the Japanese. Then
in 1945, American and Russian troops drove out the
Japanese and divided their occupation zones at the
38th parallel. America sponsored the creation of a
government in the South and in 1948 declared the
Republic of Korea at Seoul. That government was
recognized by the United Nations as the legitimate
power in the whole peninsula.
In the
North, furious at what he regarded as an American
plot to divide Korea and ideologically driven, Kim
proclaimed a rival republic. In 1950, believing
that the US (which had withdrawn its forces from
the South) had no strategic interest in Korea and
charging that the leaders of the South were
"quislings" who had collaborated with the
Japanese, Kim attacked the South. In three months,
his forces had occupied almost all the southern
part of the peninsula. Then the quickly
reintroduced American troops counterattacked and
in October, General Douglas MacArthur reached the
Yalu river, at which point the Chinese intervened.
Russian "volunteers" also flew for the North
Koreans. Fighting swayed back and forth across
Korea. By the time an armistice was worked out in
July 1953, 3 million Koreans had died and the
whole peninsula had been badly mauled.
Since then, North Korea has evolved into a
brutal, totalitarian state. Today, it has few
foreign friends or allies and feels itself
surrounded and targeted, especially by the US.
Excluded from most beneficial contacts and trade,
it has developed, at almost unbearable human cost
– with its people squeezed down to only two meals
a day and otherwise deprived to save resources - a
powerful military-industrial complex that has now
produced nuclear weapons and, apparently,
sophisticated means to deliver them.
That
is to say that after years of suffering and
privation, it has crossed the threshold that
separates the period of "acquisition" from the
period of "possession" of sufficient nuclear
weapons capacity to inflict unacceptable damage on
potential attackers and/or their nearby allies. It
could devastate South Korea, wipe out Tokyo and/or
ravage Taiwan. The US Defense Intelligence Agency
conceded that North Korea "probably now has
nuclear-armed missiles capable of hitting US
soil". In the face of this growing threat, as The
New York Times editorialized on May 17,
"Washington appears to have no clear strategy ...
That is true because once a state actually
acquires even a miniature nuclear arsenal, it
acquires military immunity since it is far too
'expensive' to attack, even if small and poor."
Nuclear weapons, moreover, are not North
Korea's only military asset: in addition to an
army estimated at 1 million soldiers, it has
massed an estimated 10,000 cannon within range of
the capital of South Korea and, if attacked, would
almost certainly obliterate Seoul. (In that area,
the 37,000 US troops are more hostage than
protector.) At huge cost, it has built a vast
complex of factories and virtual cities
underground – in which allegedly at least 20,000
laborers are employed – and so is essentially
immune to aerial strikes. It is thus both a pariah
in the international community and one that is
capable of defending itself.
It is clear,
I think, even from a brief review of its history,
that North Korea is a wounded society. Remembering
generations of humiliating foreign rule, it is
intensely xenophobic. Poor, nearly starving and
deprived in almost every sphere, its citizens must
want a better, easier, less frightening way of
life. That, I take it, is the national interest of
Korea. Outside observers often stop with national
interest in evaluating how a nation state will act
or what incentives or pressures it will respond
to. This is a mistake. Quite apart from national
interest, indeed sometimes diametrically opposed
to it, is interest of government. The North Korean
government, at whatever cost to the country, is
determined to stay in power. Kim il-Sung's son and
successor, Kim Jong-il must know that "regime
change" is a euphemism for his overthrow and
murder. What America has been saying and doing can
only have underlined his sense of personal threat
and, like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, so strongly has
he reacted that he virtually disbanded his own
political party, the Korean Workers Party, and
placed all of his hopes and most of his resources
on his huge and well pampered army.
Bellicose pronouncements such as Bush's
labeling North Korea a part of "axis of Evil" and
proclaiming in March 2004 that the US would not
"tolerate" a nuclear North Korea have been
underlined by such actions as holding naval
maneuvers off North Korea in October 2004, sending
F111 stealth fighter-bombers to positions in range
to attack Pyongyang, the creation or upgrading of
main operating bases (unfortunately named in the
military acronym "MOBs" ) within range to attack
the North and cutting off oil supplies to the
already impoverished nation. Kim must know that in
the face of this threat, he personally has little
or no room for negotiation.
This, in
brief, is what I guess a North Korean policy
planner would start with. So how would he advise
his government. Putting myself in his shoes, I
guess that he would advise that, in light of
American pronouncements and actions, North Korea
would be foolish to give up its nuclear force.
Indeed, to deter an American attack, it should
enhance its military capacity. Psychologically,
moreover, it should seek to convince the US that
it would fight the Americans and their allies,
with what the Israelis called the "Samson option",
that is, even to the point of national suicide.
Further threats are likely only to convince the
North Korean government of its danger and so
increase its determination to protect itself at
any cost. Someone must be giving Kim this advice
for it is exactly what North Korea is doing. It
recently closed down its electricity-producing
nuclear reactors to extract some 8,000 only
partially-used fuel rods which will yield enough
plutonium for at least one more bomb.
(International Herald Tribune, April 19).
It follows that approaching North Korea in
the terms of the "National Defense Strategy of the
United States of America" is self-defeating.
Target: Iran
Can Iran be
addressed in terms of the 2005 national defense
strategy with a different result? Unlike North
Korea, which certainly already possesses nuclear
weapons, intelligence specialists believe that
Iran is still in the "acquisition" phase. That is,
it appears not yet to have a weapon or weapons,
but it is probably attempting to, and may soon,
acquire them. Arguably, [3] then, in this
pre-nuclear weapons period, America has room for a
much more aggressive policy on Iran than on North
Korea.
At least theoretically, America
could attack, overwhelm the country and abort
Iran's program to acquire nuclear weapons.
Alternatively, it could deliver an aerial strike
with aircraft or missiles on nuclear or other
facilities, as Israel did in 1981 on the Osirak
nuclear facility in Iraq. The Israelis have
threatened to do the same to Iran. The aim would
be either or both to destroy the facilities or so
damage Iranian infrastructure as to humiliate and
perhaps topple the regime. Is this a real
possibility? And is the US willing for Iran to try
it? First the possibility.
The current
weapon of choice is the so-called "bunker buster",
the B61-11. Engineering studies indicate that such
a weapon could not penetrate more than five times
its length. To burrow 50 meters, it would have to
be 10 meters long. At that length, it would likely
crack in half on impact. In a test on the frozen
Alaskan tundra, it failed to penetrate more than
about three meters. Apparently, it was unable to
penetrate at all through granite or reinforced
concrete, even when from dropped from 40,000 feet
and traveling at 300 meters a second.
Since at least the major Iranian sites are
believed to be hundreds of meters below layers of
granite, they are presumably immune to this much
publicized weapon. [4] Recognizing this, Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld outlined to a
Congressional Committee plans for a "robust
nuclear earth penetrator". Such a weapon, armed
even with a tiny nuclear devise (1 kiloton
equivalent) would throw up about 1 million cubic
meters of radioactive soil. But it would do little
harm to a deeply buried site. From my personal
experience with military planners, I assume that
consequently they have proposed to increase the
explosive force, that is, to move up from 1
kiloton toward 1 megaton, with results approaching
those outlined at the beginning of this essay.
Would America be willing to use such a
device or encourage or assist others to do so? The
answer is yes. In a highly publicized move, the US
gave the Israelis both 102 long-range aircraft
(the F-16i) and 500 one-ton
(conventional-explosive armed) "bunker buster"
bombs, some 4,000 other powerful bombs and related
guidance equipment that they would need to carry
out such a strike. And when asked whether the US
might ask Israel to act against Iran, Vice
President Dick Cheney replied that "the Israelis
might well decide to act first".
Alternatively, the US could attempt
through covert action to bring about a coup detat,
as it did in Iran in 1952 against the government
of prime minister Muhammad Mossadegh. Or, finally,
it could decide to put ground troops into the
country, as it has done in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Thus, a sober Iranian government should be
amenable to threats. Is this likely?
Were
I planning policy for the Iranian government, I
would carefully study the recent history of Iraq
to see what might be in store for me. Here is what
I would see: In the 1980s, with considerable help
from America and Britain, Saddam was making
progress toward acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Flush with oil revenues, he hired experts and
bought supplies from many sources. No one in the
Ronald Reagan or first Bush administrations tried
to deter him because he was regarded as useful in
containing or defeating Iran. So, as an adviser to
the Iranian government, I would at least question
how determined America is, in principle, to stop
the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Perhaps, I
would guess, there is some flexibility in the
American policy. After all, America accommodated
to China, Israel, India, Pakistan and other
countries' acquisition of them. It now is
accommodating to North Korea's arsenal of nuclear
weapons.
With American help, Saddam did
defeat Iran, but his war efforts bankrupted him.
Fearing that his own supporters would turn against
him unless he could keep fueling the economy on
which their private wealth depended, he appealed
to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi both to help
him with further loans and to stick to
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) production quotas to keep up the price of
oil. Kuwait responded that since the danger of
Iran had disappeared, it no longer had any
interest in financing Iraq; worse, Kuwait and Abu
Dhabi far exceeded their OPEC quotas and thus
forced down the price of oil from roughly $19 to
$11 a barrel. Saddam became desperate enough to
try to rob the Kuwait bank. That was a fatal
mistake: he did not have a conventional military
machine capable of defending Iraq and lacked the
trump card of a nuclear weapon while he was
challenging America in the one area it would not
tolerate interference, access to energy. So in
1991, the first Bush administration threw him out
of Kuwait. Had these events taken place later,
when he had acquired a nuclear weapon, the Persian
policy planner could reasonably doubt that the US
would have moved militarily against him. But the
timetable was dictated by forces he could not
control.
Then, despite sanctions and other
restraints during the Bill Clinton administration,
Iraq's economic condition improved. The price of
oil rose and the Iraqis rebuilt what had been
destroyed in the invasion. Saddam concluded that
the prospects for his regime were favorable enough
that he should not, at least for the time being,
take the risk of restarting his program to acquire
nuclear weapons. He did not even keep his
conventional military force up to date. This
abstention made him more vulnerable. Since no army
he could ever have built would have matched the
Americans, Saddam paid the supreme price for not
having nuclear weapons. His lack of nuclear
weapons made it possible for the second Bush
administration to attack him in 2003.
So,
as an Iranian, I would draw the lessons that,
first, abstaining from trying to acquire nuclear
weapons would not protect me and that, second, I
should take no bold action until my own program
actually produced them.
Turning from what
happened in Iraq, what America might do to Iran,
an Iranian policy planner or intelligence analyst
would see a rising tide of threat: being told that
Iran is part of the "axis of evil", he would note
that it is subjected to various sanctions and
attempts (through pressure on European commercial
suppliers) to prevent it from acquiring the means
to defend itself. Iranian intelligence would
report that for much of the last two years, the
Americans have been over-flying Iran, pin-pointing
targets as they did in Iraq before their 2003
invasion and press attaches stationed in Europe
would forward Western press reports that America
has infiltrated into Iran teams of special forces
commandos. (Seymour Hirsch, The New Yorker,
January) More disturbing still, they read on the
Internet the National Defense Strategy of the
United States of America, which states baldly
(Section III/B/2) how the Americans are creating
"MOBs" from which they can quickly and relatively
easily "employ military power". A glance at the
map shows that Iran is almost completely
surrounded by military bases in Iraq, Qatar,
Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Turkey. If I am in any
doubt about the capability and intent, Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice and Rumsfeld publicly
removed it: they said that "a US attack on Iran is
not imminent but that the option remains
available".
Under these circumstances,
what would an Iranian policy planner advise his
government to do? Soberly, he would have to face
the fact that Iran has even less conventional
military capacity than Saddam had. He would
conclude that Iran's only hope would be to make an
invasion so costly that the US would be deterred.
To accomplish this, Iran has four assets: The
first is that, if attacked, Iran could mount a
guerrilla war. Prudently, an Iranian policy
planner would urge the government to prepare
itself. That advice has been taken. The Associated
Press reported on March 26 that "Iran is quietly
building a stockpile of thousands of high-tech
small arms and other military equipment – from
armor-piercing rifles to night-vision goggles ...
[despite U.S.] sanctions on dozens of companies
worldwide ..."
As a member of the Iranian
governing coalition, the policy planner would be
aware that the governing religious establishment
is not popular with many Iranians, but he would
also know that Iranians are firm nationalists. No
more than the Iraqis in 2003 or the Cubans in the
Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 would Iranians be out
in the streets with flowers in their hands
welcoming foreign troops. The 150,000 members of
the Revolutionary Guard would spearhead a
guerrilla resistance. They showed their fanatical
devotion to their country during the Iraq-Iran war
and almost certainly would do so again. Iran is
large and has several times the population of
Iraq; so it could, and almost certainly would,
fight a protracted guerrilla war.
Iran's
second asset is that an attack on it is unlikely
to be popular in America. Still mired in the Iraqi
"quicksand", and not doing well there, even senior
American military officers believe the war could
last for many years and could still fail. British
predictions are even more pessimistic: some senior
British officials speak of "a decades-long
problem" (The Observer, February 13). America is
also still far short of "victory" in Afghanistan
and is encountering a bloody Taliban resurgence.
Consequently, Americans would probably not
have much stomach for another guerrilla war. There
are also signs that Americans are no longer
exactly "flocking to the colors" and that the
American military is being forced to lower its
standards to meet its manpower needs. Public
opinion polls report that less than half (42%) of
the American population now approves of the Bush
administration and only one in three Americans
approves of its Republican-dominated and
relatively bellicose Congress.
The third
asset is that, unlike remote and isolated North
Korea, Iran has foreign friends and allies.
Shi'ism is a vital part of Islam and has millions
of adherents outside of Iran. The oil of Saudi
Arabia is produced in the largely Shi'ite Eastern
province. Shi'ites constitute large parts of the
populations of the Gulf states, Pakistan and even
Turkey. In Lebanon, the most powerful single
political group, Hezbollah, is a Shi'ite-based
movement. And, of course, Iraq now has a
Shi'ite-led government. (Paradoxically, ensuring
the success of the Iraqi Shi'ite establishment
(the marjiyah) was the most significant
gift of America to Iran. [5 ]) An American attack
on Iran would push the Iraqis Shi'ites into what
has been heretofore a mainly Sunni resistance; it
would do more to unite Sunnis and Shi'ites than
any effort they could mount on their own behalf.
Almost certainly, eventually if not immediately,
this would enormously expand forces the Americans
consider to be "terrorists", not only in Iraq but
throughout the Muslim world. Moreover, as they
have shown, Shi'ites are usually far more
determined fighters than any other group,
including the Sunni followers of Osama bin Ladin.
Iran's fourth asset is that, unlike North
Korea, it is a significant trading partner with
countries and multinational corporations in much
of Europe and Asia. So keen to do business with
Iran are many of them that they have flouted
American-imposed sanctions and have sought to work
toward a peaceful accommodation of Iran in the
United Nations and the European Union. Before,
during and after the overthrow of the Shah's
government in 1979, this asset proved of great
importance to Iran. It will continue to be so.
But, Persian intelligence analysts, like
the rest of us, realize that governments do not
always act on rational assessments. Sometimes they
are driven by ideology or by political
considerations unrelated to the immediate issue.
Sometimes they engage in wishful thinking or
listen to the siren song of those who are
desperate for their help. As in Iraq, exile groups
tell the Americans that the Iranian government is
weak and that the people are only waiting for a
signal to overthrow it or that, with a little
help, they can do so. This assessment comes not
only from surviving members of the old regime but
also from the Mujahideen e-Khalq. So, despite what
would appear to an Iranian policy planner as
logical, he would wish to be certain. The best way
to approach certainty would be to acquire nuclear
weapons. That, after all, is what all the other
nuclear powers - the US, the Soviet Union, Great
Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan
and now North Korea – have done.
The
"acquisition phase" is a time of great danger.
Iranians must assume that America, Israel and
perhaps others will try to stop Iran from actually
getting nuclear weapons. Therefore, a prudent
Iranian policy planner would advise his government
to move as rapidly as possible. One objective
would be to acquire a copy of the engineering
plans that disappeared from the International
Atomic Energy Agency; this might obviate the need
for testing. Perhaps this has already been done. A
second prudent action would be to deploy
production facilities as secretly, widely and
deeply as feasible to make their destruction
difficult or impossible. This, too, has already
been done. A third possible action would be to
purchase components on the world market. Iran did
purchase centrifuges from Pakistan. A fourth
option would be to try, if possible, to buy a
completed weapon. No one knows if this has
happened.
(Parenthetically, to show that
my hypothetical Iran policy planner is not just a
woolly minded Persian mullah, a distinguished
student of strategy at the Hebrew University in
Israel commented [6] that "had the Iranians not
tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be
crazy".)
During this dangerous acquisition
period, which might last until, perhaps, 2007 or
2008, a prudent Iranian government would seek to
throw dust in the eyes of would-be attackers. The
"dust" could consist of the claim that Iran's
program is purely for the production of energy and
so is both peaceful and legal under the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty and/or that under
appropriate circumstances Iran would drop work on
weapons. Diplomatically, it could hold endless
discussions on terms and conditions with the
International Atomic Energy Agency, with the
European Union and its component governments, and,
even if indirectly, with the US, seeking to drive
a wedge between the Americans and other powers.
[7] Numerous articles in the press show that this
is exactly what has happened. [8]
Evidently, Iran has decided to press ahead
with acquisition of at least the potential to
acquire nuclear weapons.
Notes
[1]
www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/dod/nds-usa_mar2005.htm
[2] The highlighted words appear thus in
the policy paper.
[3] A recent argument
for this policy is given by Kenneth M Pollack in
The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict between Iran
and America (New York: Random House, 2005). In
a previous book, The Threatening Storm: The
Case for Invading Iraq, Pollack urged the
invasion of Iraq. He now says that his advice was
wrong.
[4] Benjamin Phelan "Buried
Truths", Harpers, December 2004.
[5] The
Iraqi Shi'ite United Iraqi Alliance won almost
half the votes in the recent election and
dominates the government. Many of its leaders,
including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, have
spent much of their lives in Iran, are close to
its ruling religious establishment, and share its
beliefs. Its militia is Iranian-trained. Even the
Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabani, a Sunni, has very
close ties to Iran.
[6] Martin van
Creveld, "Israel planning to attack Iran?"
International Herald Tribune, August 21-22, 2004.
[7] Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign
Relations commented in the May 6 International
Herald Tribune that Iran "has managed its nuclear
negotiations rather effectively [so that the]
longer the negotiations go on, the more likely it
is that the United States, and not Iran, will once
more stand isolated".
[8] The
International Herald Tribune mostly drawing from
The New York Times: eg April 6, May 16, May 19. In
the May 19 article, Hossein Mousavian from the
Supreme National Security Council was quoted as
saying. "Iran is 100% flexible, open, ready to
negotiation, to compromise on any mechanism, but
not cession."
William R Polk
taught at Harvard from 1955 to 1961 when he was
appointed a member of the Policy Planning Council
of the US State Department. In 1965 he became
professor of history at the University of Chicago
and founded its Middle Eastern Studies Center.
Subsequently, he also became president of the
Adlai Stevenson Institute of International
Affairs. Among his books are The United States
and the Arab World, The Elusive Peace: The Middle
East in the Twentieth Century, and the
just-published Understanding Iraq. Other of
his writings can be accessed on
www.williampolk.com.
(Republished with
permission from Japan Focus)
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