Zakaria on Exaggerated Threats

Come on! With a name like that he has to Hate America!

The father of a childhood friend of mine worked w/threat assessment and also ( I think ) targetting. Maybe "team red" but I'm not sure.

For superb background in this area, see James Carrols "House Of War".

Interesting stuff.

As it happens I just finished reading an article in this months Foreign Affairs that makes some similar points.

Except Prof. Mueller says the enemy is made 20 feet tall intead of 10.

You mean Ahmadinejad is a US puppet? Better not tell his supporters that, or they'll really get pissed.

OT altogether, I've found that here at my office PC, I have to enter my handle, email address and URL in order to post here. On my home PC, however, all that information is pre-entered, but when I try to post a reply, I get an error message saying the information wasn't there. This software is wack, yo.

Plus, the enemy is much "bigger" because all of our real enemies, major and minor, are conflated with those who are simply "not American" and "not the right color". See, it's not just Ira[qn] -- there are over five BILLION people out there who hate us for our freedom.

You misunderstand, Raging Bee - the US (or at least the Bush Administration) is Ahmadinejad's puppet...

Fareed has often been the voice of reason in Condi's ear.

For example, from the Aug 5, 2002 edition of Newsweek.

...Having mastered smuggling and cheating, Saddam now has between $2 billion and $3 billion a year that he can use for whatever purpose he wants. Last year Secretary of State Colin Powell made a valiant attempt to shore up containment by proposing "smart sanctions," which would have targeted Saddam's regime more tightly and loosened the controls on the Iraqi people. But smart sanctions never got off the ground. Iraq's neighbors, European powers (most shamefully, France) and Russia all conspired to maintain the system as is, which brings their companies cozy contracts. The failure of smart sanctions was the end of any hope that containment could be shored up. (my note: Those damned French; they're to blame...)

The threat Iraq poses is not overwhelming--yet. Saddam's chemical and biological arsenal is difficult to use. He has rarely cooperated with terrorists in the past, and there is no evidence that he has any links with Al Qaeda. But he is a potential threat, particularly if he manages to acquire nuclear weapons, which is certainly his goal. Pollack makes a persuasive case that given leaky sanctions, at some point the world will have to deal with Saddam, nuclear-armed and dangerous. Why not now, when he is weak?

Still, a pre-emptive invasion of a country gives one pause. But there is another massive benefit to it. Done right, an invasion would be the single best path to reform the Arab world. The roots of Islamic terror reside in the dysfunctional politics of the region, where failure and repression have produced fundamentalism and violence. For reform to spread, the Arab world needs a success story. It needs one major country that embraces modernity, maintains its identity and inspires the region, just as Japan did for East Asia.

Iraq could be that country. Before it became a playpen for Saddam Hussein's gruesome ambitions, it was one of the most secular, advanced, literate and civilized countries in the Middle East. Alone in the Arab world, it has both water and oil--a developed river-valley civilization and natural-resource wealth. Were Saddam's totalitarian regime to be replaced by a state that respected human rights, enforced the rule of law and created a market economy, it could begin to transform that world.

But for this strategy to work, two elements become essential. First, the postwar "nation-building" of Iraq will be as crucial as the war itself. The administration's actions in Afghanistan are not an encouraging sign, where an ideal, moderate, pro-Western leader, Hamid Karzai, is being slowly destroyed largely because the Pentagon will not extend security protection outside Kabul. (my note: How'd that Karzai thing turn out? Not as well as Iraq you say?)

Second, we will need allies and the United Nations. Without a sustained commitment from them, broad and lasting success will not be possible. For one thing, it would be nice to spread the costs. If we assume the war will be half as expensive as the gulf war--250,000 troops rather than 500,000--it will run around $35 billion. Extrapolating from the Balkan example, reconstruction efforts will probably total $15 billion to $20 billion for the first three years, after which Iraq's oil revenues would pay for its own nation-building.

To his credit, his old advice is still at the website, but why not, since we can all google it.

The sanctions were falling apart in 2001-2002 mostly due to Europeans and reporters like Fisk (remember Fisk?) reporting on their effects to the consternation of Washington. What to do, ...what to do? Those softish Europeans were on the edge of busting sanctions wide open before 9/11 and the fledgling political scientists could put their nation-building theories into practice.

Ought to be able to do it for, what? $15-20B over the first three years based on the Balkans experience. We could afford it.

On a positive note, Fareed has some interesting views on nation-building that were provided very timely in the summer of 2003 but alas, were not followed. In The Future of Freedom, Zakaria argues that reasonable constitutional liberties are much more important than elections and modern democracy (i.e. elections). Civil liberties sponsored by the strong arm of force.

Hell, we thought that having elections every few months would quell the violence over yon.

1. Mr. Zakaria has written an interesting column which should be taken seriously. However, his claims as to the might of the German war machine in 1938 are seriously in error. As described in Walter Goerlitzs' history of the German General Staff, the German military in 1938, far from being the most powerful force in the world, was in no condition to enter into hostilities with Britain and France. In fact, the General Staff was greatly concerned with Hitlers' agressive posture and feared he would instigate a war before Germany was ready. At the time of the Munich conference, the officers therin were sufficiently worried that some of them were planning a military coup to remove Hitler from power in the event that Chamberlain called Hitlers' bluff. As we all know, Chamberlain failed to do so and the rest is history.

2. Mr. Zakaria apparently assumes that the ruling junta in Iran will be deterred from nuclear adventurism by the US and Israeli nuclear arsenals, as the former Soviet Union and Mainline China were so deterred during the cold war. This assumes that these folks are sane individuals who will act in their own best interest. Unfortunately, their rhetoric indicates that they are in agreement with the Armageddonist Christian whackjobs in the US that the end of times is at hand and the battle of Armageddon is nigh. Fortunately, the latter doesn't have their finger on the nuclear trigger, the former will if Iran developes a nuclear capability.

2. Mr. Zakaria apparently assumes that the ruling junta in Iran will be deterred from nuclear adventurism by the US and Israeli nuclear arsenals, as the former Soviet Union and Mainline China were so deterred during the cold war. This assumes that these folks are sane individuals who will act in their own best interest. Unfortunately, their rhetoric indicates that they are in agreement with the Armageddonist Christian whackjobs in the US that the end of times is at hand and the battle of Armageddon is nigh. Fortunately, the latter doesn't have their finger on the nuclear trigger, the former will if Iran developes a nuclear capability.

Regarding your second paragraph, I don't think I agree with it.

1. The Iranian regime is not a junta. They have a revolutionary inspired government, but one that is nominally democratic in nature. Most governments don't insist that it is an illegitimate government. I'd say it's a nationalist government with populist support.

2. The Soviets and Chinese were not kept away from nuclear adventurism. They each had a nuclear force and that force actually was a stabilizing force by providing rough parity (of sorts). This business of apocalyptic visions in Iran isn't much different than the evil that we attributed to the Soviets. Evil was irrational to freedom loving Americans as well.

3. The Soviets and Chinese had their own border disputes and kept sizable military contingents on alert because the two forms of communism were sort of competitive (maybe akin to US version of democracy vs. European social democracy).

4. Are the Iranians breaking any specific international laws in their nuclear development? I thought we summarily withdrew from anti-proliferation treaties, reclassified our arsenal numbers and continue to develop tactical, bunker busting nukes. Our withdrawal from the AMB treaty in 2002 puts nations on alert that we intend to fight a winnable nuclear war. Meanwhile, Khamenei has issued a fatwa in 2005 forbidding the stockpiling and development of nukes in Iran.

5. US fundamentalists have their thumb on the nuclear trigger now. The Iranians don't yet. From a spectator perspective, I'm curious to see who's in a bigger hurry to accelerate the rapture. August 22d came and went much to Bernard Lewis' disappointment.

6. The Iranians are dangerous because they are seen as a force capable of uniting trans-national islamists into a larger entity rather than fragmenting it to reduce it's power. Our general policy is that breaking things down into constituent parts is better (for us). For example, the breakup of Soviet Union, the breakup of Yugoslavia, the upcoming breakup of Iraq, and so on.

Re Ted

1. Relative to item 4 in your list, one must distinguish between Christian fundamentalists and Armageddonists. President Bush, although he professes to be a Christian fundamentalist has given no indication that he believes the end times is at hand or that the battle of Armegeddon is nigh. I am no defender of Dubya, as I consider him to be a lying,coke snorting, pot smoking drunk; however, associating him with Armegeddonists is manifestly unfair, in the absence of any evidence. Therefore, I stand on my comment that Armegeddonists do not have a finger on the nuclear trigger.

2. Relative to item 1, I accept your comment that the current regime in Iran is not a junta, based on the definition of a junta. However, I take issue with your comment that the regime is nominally democratic. If they are nominally democratic, then so was the former Soviet Union.

3. I fail to understand the comment in item 2. Both sides in the cold war accepted the strategy of MAD which basically assumed that any initial nuclear strike would escalate into an all out nuclear war which would destroy both sides. This concept was strongly disputed by commentators such as Herman Kahn, among others, who argued that nuclear exchanges could be kept limited.

4. In item 6, the Iran regime is considered dangereous because Amadinejad and the mullahs behind him are considered to be fanatics. Contrary to your claim in item 2 concerning the sanity of Soviet leadership, there is no evidence that our side considered Khrushchev, Breshnev, etc to be insane. In fact, they were, on the whole rather conservative in their approach. In fact, Khrushchev was removed from power in part due to the one occasion when he exhibited recklessness, namely the Cuban Missle affair.

5. Your assertion in item 4 is quite typical of the blame America first crowd, populated by such liminaries as Noam Chomsky, et al.