Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Regime Change as a Non-Proliferation Strategy
Robert Kagan argues, "Regime change in Tehran is the best nonproliferation policy." Supporting an opposition more open to the West, and seeking to reintegrate into the global economy and internatonial order (a big assumption here) could help reverse, or at least slow Iran's march down the nuclear path. Is regime change the safer than the status quo (doing nothing). Kagan believes regime change is safer than waiting for Iran to build the bomb, or having Israel pre-empt Iranian nuclear facilities which could escalate to a regional conflict. But the "do-nothing" option would in my mind be the more conservative/safer strategy. I should qualify that "do-nothing" also includes passing UN sanctions/resolutions and providing public moral support with more quiet political/economic aid. "Do-nothing" is acutally a safe form of attacking the regime's moral legitimacy. This strategy is the better (or at least more legitimate) strategy in ensuring a safer world than regime change IF Iranians can vote out of power (or topple over) the current government before the regime acquires nuclear weapons.
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I'm not a fan of the Kagan approach. He is beyond a broken record in his recycling of the models used to persuade and promote the war in Iraq.
ReplyDeleteI don't think he is correct to state that a regime change in Iran will slow down or reverse the Iranian nuclear program (this is assuming that they possess a weapons-oriented program). I'm not stating anything particularly insightful when I assert that the Iranian opposition does not want to revolt against the system, but merely reform or topple the status quo regime (if memory serves, Flynnt Leverett, Trita Parsi and Ray Takeyh have all made this observation). I think that this fact, in so far as it is still an accurate depiction of the end-goal of the Iranian opposition, places Kagan at odds with the rest of the punditocracy (and experts). I think it also undermines the quality of his advice by demonstrating it to be the product of an abstract, cookie-cutter style of theory (and his piece reads like an equation with values plugged into it) as opposed to being a product of the synthesis of substantive historical and cultural education and analysis. That's a circuitous and rambling way to say that he's wrong.
Let me make an alternative suggestion to both Kagan's and your policy responses. It's a simple, and perhaps radical and foolhardy piece of advice: open up unconditional talks with the current regime. Pull a Nixon in China or a Reagan meets Gorbachev (I hate historical analogies because I think they're fundamentally unsound, but they're good for scoring a point or two in a discussion). I don't think toppling the regime or toppling the current government will change anything. My suggestion is based on the following assumptions:
1) The Iranian opposition movement is reformist, not revolutionary. Operating from that assumption restricts the Obama administration's choices, but I think it signals to the current regime and any future one that we recognize the complexity of the processes that are taking place. We realize that we will have to deal with Iran as it is, not as we would wish it to be (which presumably would govern under a system similar to the early 20th-century Constitutional period). It shows that we will be prepared to deal with what the future government is, regardless of its image and content.
Freed Academic Haleh Esfandiari: 'Iranians Want Evolution, Not Revolution'
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-tucker/freed-academic-haleh-esfa_b_269399.html
2) Any public moral (or even private financial and especially military) support offered by the administration will likely harm the movement by providing the present regime with an excuse to strike at it. A policy of active diplomacy with the present regime will limit, if not completely prohibit, the regime from exploiting that perception to use against the reform movement. The flip side is that the US risks alienating a future generation of Iran's rulers, however I think Obama's pragmatism and his charisma will provide the necessary capital to decrease the likelihood of that risk from occurring.
Financial support runs into the same problem. That stain of "puppetry" is one reason (a major reason) why voices in the West such as Akbar Ganji and Trita Parsi (I think Haleh Esfandiari as well) have publicly argued against US funding.
I suspect, also, that the Iranian historical memory is longer than the US'. Any attempt to publicly link the US and the Iranian opposition would arouse memories of the 1953 coup against Mohammed Mossadegh, which could prove deadly to the opposition.
3) The nuclear program is nationalist. More than simply couched in the rhetoric of Persian nationalism, it has been for a very long time framed as a source (and instrument) of national pride, rather than a product of Islamic pride (the Pakistanis beat them to that). The sooner that is realized, the better we will be in negotiations with Iran.
ReplyDeleteThis is where I think his assumptions demonstrate how off the rails the proposition for regime change is. It sets up a unique and perhaps internally inconsistent argument.
On the one hand, he makes it clear that the Iranian nuclear weapons program is threat because of the character of the regime (the regime matters. That's classic neoconservatism).
On the other hand, however, he implies that that an Iranian state with nuclear weapons is dangerous, regardless of its internal character.
It's as if he wants to have his cake and eat it too by establishing some type of equifinal, I suppose, argument. He does not indicate in his piece that he is assuming the intrinsic danger of nuclear weapons. Rather, a reading of his piece would seem to permit the conclusion that Iranian nuclear weapons present a unique danger to the security of the region, the nonproliferation regime and the international community. If that is the case, that seems difficult to accept given the existence of other nuclear states in close proximity to the country; states that possess more weapons and are as likely to pose risks to the stability of those aforementioned apparatuses as much as a nuclear Iran. Pakistan, India, Israel are three. His is a hard line position on Iran carries with it an analysis that predestines to failure any efforts short of military action, I think. And I think we have to return then to that worn allegation of neoconservatism as possessing an Israel-centric assumption. There may be something to that.
Unfortunately, I think we end up with the nightmare that Kagan envisions, that being an Israeli strike upon Iran. I find little in the way to sidestep that scenario given Kagan's approach. If that does happen, the President Obama would have a dilemma on his hands, potentially bigger than he has now. If Israel strikes Iran because it makes no distinction between the Islamic regime in its present state and any reformed (or post-revolutionary) state, what is the President, what is the United States to do? Nonproliferation will go up in smoke once Iran does.
hi joe
ReplyDeletethanks for your insightful comments. i agree particularly with your point #3 on iranian nukes being a nationalist project. i thought i read at one point that even Mir Hossein Mousavi stated he wouldn't necessarily reverse Iran's nuclear program. so there's no guarantee that regime change (and here i agree with you in a change in leadership, not an overthrow of the system) would actually defuse regional tension. if this is true, kagan's argument holds no water.
in an ideal world, yes, open dialogue with iran would be the best solution. we saw obama opening this door in his cairo speech in 2009. but iran appears uninterested in holding any serious dialogue w/the US. i'm not sure if even unconditional would bring iranian leaders to the table. perhaps there is continued discussion taking place under the radar among lower-level officials. but from what i gather from public sources, at this point, it appears that obama's political capital has burnt out over the iran issue.