KARL MARX once said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and second as farce. He wasn't right about much, but this quip might prove an accurate summary of American foreign policy under the Bush administration, which is moving in the farcical direction of war with Iran even as we remain tragically mired in Iraq.
You might wonder who could be so reckless as to contemplate an Iran war with the unfinished Iraq war standing as a bloody monument to American hubris. But the sad truth is that the same people who supported the Iraq war, and who profess to believe that it's going well, are beginning to beat the drums for war with Iran. Amid a steady stream of tough talk from the White House, conservative media outlets have run provocative reports on Iran while conservative political organizations have taken out advertisements denouncing its leadership as a grave threat to American security. With the American military machine stretched to its limits in Iraq, the conservative message machine is gearing up for war in Iran.
In fact, the conservative message is much the same as it was on Iraq and it suffers from the same dubious assumption that our enemies are too irrational to be tolerated, bargained with or deterred by superior forces. We are told that Iran is a cruel dictatorship run by madmen who are seeking nuclear weapons in hopes of harming America. Next, presumably, we will be told that military action, and perhaps a regime change, is the sole means of neutralizing this threat. Admittedly, it appears that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, but its reasons for doing so and the threat posed by a nuclear Iran deserve closer scrutiny than they have received so far.
The United States and Iran have been at odds ever since the pro-American regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in 1979. But until recently, our primary conflict has been the rhetorical sparring of ideological enemies located halfway around the world from one another. We include them in our Axis of Evil and they call us the Great Satan, and we even fight proxy wars in other Middle Eastern countries.
But until recently, the Iranian regime has not had to regard the United States as a genuine threat to its power. This all changed in 2001, when the United States invaded Afghanistan, depositing thousands of troops on Iran's eastern flank. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, depositing thousands of troops on Iran's western flank.
Meanwhile Pakistan, Iran's neighbor to the southeast, became an ally in the American war on terrorism, with the result that Iran, previously isolated from American power, became surrounded on three sides by American forces and American allies.
With its strategic position thus weakened and the Bush administration asserting a right to launch preemptive war on any nation it deems threatening, one need not believe that Iran is a rogue state bent on large scale terrorism in order to understand why it wants nuclear weapons. One need only believe that Iran is a nation governed by rational, if repressive, leaders who are seeking to preserve their security in an increasingly dangerous region.
The conservative message would have us believe that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons for the singular purpose of committing nuclear terrorism, but it is far more likely that, having witnessed the fall of Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran's leaders have determined that nuclear deterrence is the only way to be sure that they don't fall next.
The policy implications of this understanding of Iranian motives are twofold. First, if fear and isolation are at the root of Iran's nuclear ambitions, then the Bush administration would be wise to tone down its rhetoric and scale back its efforts to isolate Iran from the international community. Second, if Iran is seeking nuclear weapons for defensive reasons, then a war aimed at halting its nuclear program may not be worth the cost. A nuclear Iran might be impervious to future invasions, but faced with a preponderance of American forces on its borders and beyond, it would be suicidal for Iran to use nuclear weapons offensively. Deterrence has worked before, and there's no reason to think that it can't work again.
One of the many faults of the Bush administration is its conviction that regimes like Iran are animated by some blind desire to harm the United States, rather than by the simple instinct of self preservation that animates all nations.
And so American foreign policy under the Bush administration has taken no account of the legitimate fears of our adversaries, regarding them only with an unwavering hostility that makes peaceful coexistence impossible. Our enemies are, of course, unfriendly, but if our foreign policy is based on the notion that they are irrational, we have nothing but war to look forward to.
Alec Solotorovsky's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at asolotorovsky@cavalierdaily.com.
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