It stems from the first paragraph of a recent article:
As Iran crosses successive nuclear demarcations and mischievously intervenes in Iraq, the question of how to address the Islamic republic is once more preoccupying Washington. Economic sanctions, international ostracism, military strikes and even support for hopeless exiles are all contemplated with vigor and seriousness. One option, however, is rarely assessed: engagement as a means of achieving a more pluralistic and responsible government in Tehran.
Let me break out the clue pills for the authors of this Washington Post piece.
If this option has not been assessed very much, it is because it is viewed as the Eleventh Commandment brought down from the mountain of conventional wisdom. What on Earth do the authors think we have been doing the last decade and more with Iran? Under two presidents no less!
But this is the problem with our foreign policy realists. Critics of engagement have been questioning the assumptions of talking to Iran and the realists refuse to admit there is any assessment going on at all!
But the lack of reality comes through loud and clear. I don't understand how the authors can argue this:
Paradoxically, to liberalize the theocratic state, the United States would do better to shelve its containment strategy and embark on a policy of unconditional dialogue and sanctions relief. A reduced American threat would deprive the hard-liners of the conflict they need to justify their concentration of power.
Really? Yet just prior to this statement the authors justify such a policy by recalling containment of the Soviet Union:
For too long, Washington has thought that a policy of coercion and sanctions applied to Iran would eventually yield a responsible and representative regime. Events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe suggest that containment eventually generates sufficient pressure to force autocratic elites to accommodate both international mandates and the aspirations of their restless constituents.
I know the Cold War. I remember the Cold War. And this description, sirs, is no Cold War.
Are these authors seriously trying to tell us that containment was based around the dual concepts of unconditional dialogue and sanctions relief regarding the Soviet Union? I seem to remember it based on confronting Moscow with our military and political resolve, undermining their economy, fomenting revolt in their satellite states, and opposing them around the globe in proxy wars to prevent their power and ideology from expanding. And we struck back where we could. We only talked to avoid nuclear armageddon as we waged this cold war.
If these two authors want to use our Cold War experience to argue for the aggressive containment that seeks to defeat Iran, then we're talking real policy.
But they aren't talking about victory. They're talking about dressing up surrender as success.
The Cold War didn't start until thirty years after the Bolshevik revolution. And the policy of containment was first viewed as something that would take years to work and not the four decades it ultimately required (not to mention that we stood on the edge of nuclear war during that time and fought hot wars in Korea and Vietnam to win it).
We are in a race against time. Iran's mullahs may get the bomb or the Iranian people may revolt against the mullahs. But the realists wouldn't dream of trying to speed up that revolt with action. And this despite the statement in the article that "Iran has long appeared ready for democracy." Or are the authors claiming that democracy is imminent in Iran? Is it more imminent than Soviet collapse appeared to be in the late 1940s?
The very comparison to the Cold War against the Soviet Union makes it clear that the authors don't understand that our goal is to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons and not to figure out how to contain a nuclear-armed Iran.
Or maybe they understand just fine. Maybe they think that mullahs with atomic weapons is perfectly acceptable to them.
Damn. Another mouthful of beer lost with that thought.
Yes, lovely decade we're having.
