[Vision2020] Candidate issues - Foreign Policy

[Andreas Schou]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 9:28 AM, No Weatherman <no.weatherman at gmail.com>wrote:

> ACS:
>
> I have no interest in justifying the Bush administration's approach to
> Iran unless he is secretly preparing to take out their nuclear program
> though I would rather see Israel launch that strike.
>
> I'm curious to know, however, if you believe it would be profitable to
> sit down with Ahmadinejad and what exactly you believe it could
> accomplish.


First of all, we can't destroy Iran's nuclear program without carpet-bombing
Tehran, where the bunkers that contain the enrichment centrifuges actually
are; at that point, Iran is perfectly capable of directly disrupting our
actual military goals in Afghanistan and Iraq, its two neighbors. Is doing
incremental damage to the Iranian enrichment program worth creating two
failed states on either side of Iran*? No one who knows anything about
foreign policy (other than the deliberately ignorant neoconservative camp)
believes that it's actually possible to cause irreversible damage to the
Iranian nuclear program using anything short of a preemptive nuclear strike
on multiple Iranian sites.

Iran's only purpose in obtaining a nuclear weapon is to deter us. Despite
our saber-rattling rhetoric about Iran being the a nation-as-suicide-bomber,
it -- like Libya -- has certain rational foreign policy goals; further,
unlike Libya and despite the disproportionate influence of the Guardian
Council, Iran's democratic institutions actually have some leverage against
the rulers. This means two things:

(1) Reducing Iran's perceived need for a nuclear deterrent through security
guarantees might be an effective strategy in mitigating its pursuit of a
nuclear deterrent.

(2) Reducing military pressure from Iran removes a major issue from the
Iranian theoconservatives' quiver. This gives competent (but still hostile)
moderates like Khatami the electoral room to take power in upcoming
elections.

(3) Direct diplomacy has worked. Contra Roger, it worked in Libya. Read the
Ron Suskind article linked below. It worked in North Korea under Clinton,
and under Bush's second term.

(4) Direct diplomacy doesn't hurt. The best argument conservatives have is
that it raises the other nation's perceived power and prestige. But what
does that actually *mean*? Are you saying that the legions of intelligence
analysts in every foreign nation are unable to accurately divine the fact
that we cannot actually achieve our goals through military force because we
are committed in two adjacent countries which Iran has the military
capability to seriously muck up?

Incidentally, you're lying when you're saying you you're a PUMA. You support
not one of Hillary Clinton's stated policy positions.

-- ACS

(1) http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0610.suskind.html
(2)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/07/AR2008080703026.html
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