Lord, I hate reading anything by Zakaria. I feel brain cells choke and die every time I do so. I worry I'm in the later stages of Flowers for Algernon because of him.
Zakaria directs his deep nuance at the problem of coercing Iran into giving up their nuclear program:
In a superb essay in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Columbia University scholar Robert Jervis points out that the U.S.'s coercive diplomacy has almost never worked. In Panama (1989), Iraq (1990), Serbia (1998), Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (again, in 2003), Washington used sanctions, pressure and the threat of force to try to get leaders to change course. None did, and Washington had to make good on its threat and go to war. With North Korea, the threats also failed, but in this case, Washington has chosen to abjure military action and contain the regime. If the Administration wants to succeed this time, Jervis argues, "it will need to up its game and take an unusually smart and bold approach to negotiations."
The "smart and bold" part would be offering enough carrots to get Iran to verifiably end their nuclear weapons program.
Silly me, I thought the solution was difficult.
One, coercive diplomacy is always very difficult. In the history of using the threat of armed force or other pain to make a state change its policies from the status quo, few examples of success exist. Threats of force to deter actions are far more successful. Part of that relative success rate is that if a state refrains from doing something (they are deterred)--maintaining the status quo--the target state can simply deny that they planned to take that action anyway and that the side threatening force was just getting all worked up over nothing. Defeat is always more obvious if you give in to threats to change the status quo. It is harder to argue you intended to stop doing what the force-wielding side told you to stop doing.
Which makes sense because coercion and deterrence are opposite sides of the same coin in a struggle. If we try to coerce Iran by inflicting pain on them, Iran is simultaneously trying to deter more pain than they can endure by threatening pain we cannot endure if we resort to force.
The supreme silliness of Zakaria's position is that because we are involved in a course of action that is inherently very difficult, we can essentially redefine "coercion" and declare victory. Zakaria would have us offer benefits to Iran that gets them to agree to verifiable steps to end their nuclear program.
Let me digress to point out that Iran denies it has nuclear weapons programs and that Saddam Hussein showed how to turn a verification program intended to make Iraq prove it disarmed from WMD into a program that requires the inspectors to prove that Iraq hadn't disarmed. So there is a problem with any program that relies on the current regime agreeing to refrain from pursuing nuclear weapons.
Back to the bribery angle. Iran has been pursuing a nuclear program at great cost, under increasingly burdensome sanctions, and in the face of a level of threat that is difficult for me to judge. Does Iran really believe Israel has the capability to attack and does Iran believe America has the resolve to attack?
Indeed, does Iran believe that even a successful attack on Iran's known facilities will cripple their program rather than merely set it back a bit?
My point is that any agreement that can convince Iran's current leaders to give up their nuke program will involve a bribe so large that it is no longer "coercive." Clearly, saying that a "carrot" is needed to make "coercive" diplomacy work is just a way to appease Iran without appearing to appease them. Hey, we're just talking about a smart and nuanced way to make "coercive" diplomacy work, right?
Poppycock.
And even if we can get Iran to pretend to agree to an end to their nuclear program if we give them enough bribes, my digression on enforcing the deal becomes the primary problem.
Talks with Iran have several goals and none of them are ending Iran's nuclear program through talks.
One, talks can buy time for Iran to go nuclear by cushioning coercion by delaying sanctions and force.
Two, talks can buy time for Iran to go nuclear by allowing people nominally opposed to Iranian nukes (or those unwilling to say that they don't mind if Iran gets nukes) to claim they are working to end Iran's nuclear programs until it is too late to stop Iran, relieving them of the burden of refusing to stop Iran from going nuclear.
Three, talks can convince skeptics of using force to stop Iran that we truly are trying to avoid the last resort of force and make armed strikes acceptable to a sufficiently large coalition. (Note that all but one of the examples of coercive diplomacy failure cited above--North Korea--could be considered successes under this class of objective, if not means, of course.)
Four, talks can marginally slow nuclear progress in Iran long enough for opponents of the regime to bring down that regime.
Five, talks might lower tensions to prevent a needless war over a nuclear program that doesn't exist.
I suspect reason one is why Iran talks and reason two is why we talk.
And Zakaria chooses reason number 5. I suppose I shouldn't mock Zakaria and simply hope that his present state of analysis is one of coming into the light rather than coming out of the late--or just existing in perpetual darkness.
