At her new blog, The Optimistic Conservative, J.E. Dyer (a retired US Naval intelligence officer currently writing a book on the Cold War) has a brilliant analysis — posted in response to a reader who asked that she give “a short explanation as to why Iran’s nuclear weapons program is such an earth-shattering concern” since one of the lessons of the Cold War is “nuclear deterrence works just fine.”
Dyer writes that such an assessment “is, basically, 180 out from reality” and she has a very long and very compelling response – very much worth reading in its entirety. Here is a portion, to give the gist of her argument in the hope readers will go read the whole thing:
It is understandable that, from the American perspective, nuclear deterrence seems to have “worked” during the Cold War. The
Soviet Union never attacked us, nor did local conflicts escalate to global war. But the lesson of the Cold War for nations like
Iran and
North Korea is that nuclear deterrence worked against the
United States.
. . . [W]hen the Soviet Union sponsored local and proxy insurgencies in various parts of the globe,
America chose in every case to accept either compromise, or outright loss of the nations in question to the Soviet orbit. . . [I]t was a matter of a priori self-constraint in the selection of our own objectives, on the general premise that any confrontation with the Soviets over the superpowers’ “periphery” had to remain “limited.” . . . .
. . . Soviet support for local Marxists – arms, “advisors” – and affiliation by their thuggish regimes with Moscow, were features of Soviet activism in Africa, Latin America, and parts of the Middle East – from Somalia and Ethiopia to Angola and former Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Nicaragua, El Salvador, Cuba, Yemen (once divided into “North” and “South,” with South Yemen the Soviet client), Libya, Syria, and Iraq. . . . [I]n none of these cases did the
US choose to seriously confront the Soviets, until, in a few places, the very last years of the Cold War.
. . . I don’t think Americans realize, today, how different the outcome of [the Cuban Missile] crisis looks from the perspective of others than ourselves. We remember the crisis as one that ended with
America unmolested, and the Soviets agreeing to remove their missiles from
Cuba. Marxists and other radicals remember this event as one in which the
USSR was able to get us to agree not to deploy our new-generation Jupiter ballistic missiles in
Turkey. . .
. . . And the lesson [states like
North Korea and
Iran] take from the Cold War is that, if you can get nuclear weapons, you can hobble
America before she even emerges from the chute to face off with you. . . .
I do not believe
Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons so that she can promptly attack
Israel with them. . . . Certainly the clerics are radical Shi’a Muslims, but they are also Persians, with a long, historical view of the role of
Persia in Asia and the
Middle East. What they seek is hegemony of
Iran’s region: to be the gateway of the Asian powers to the resources of the
Middle East, and the go-to regional contact for European commercial interests. . . . [T]they know that to be regional hegemons, even the scions of the true line of the Prophet must be nuclear-armed.
. . . The real deterrence will be what
Iran is hoping to do, drawing on the lessons of
Korea,
Vietnam,
Germany, and
Cuba: deter the
United States from intervening as
Iran ramps up activism in the
Middle East. Iran’s goal is to squeeze America out of the Middle East – and not solely so that she can have a free hand against Israel, although I believe that is one of her goals. The main obstacle to
Iran achieving hegemony of the region is that there is already a hegemon of the
Middle East, and it is us.
The things the whole world takes for granted today – free access to the chokepoint-infested waterways of the Middle East, local nationals’ control of their natural resources, and global access to those resources through a relatively free market – are all a product of American hegemony of the region. No other likely hegemon would produce this result. If the former Soviets had ever gained enough of a foothold there to become the hegemon, none of these conditions would prevail in the
Middle East. . . .
Iran could, with a nuclear arsenal, induce us to self-constrain against intervening in the Persian Gulf nations where
Iran might sponsor insurgencies. Americans would almost certainly clamor for abandonment of bases, in small nations many of them have never heard of, rather than intervening on behalf of what are admittedly a collection of often politically-incorrect emirs . . . .
Iran has long experience with supporting insurgency and terrorism; it would be little, if any, stretch to apply it in the
Persian Gulf.
Iran
does not have to defeat the
US in a direct confrontation to squeeze us out of the region. She has to make us calculate that the price of staying is too high, in the face of unrest (and probably regime-changes) in our partner nations, and the possibility that intervention could draw us into conflict with…a nuclear-armed
Iran.
. . . Beyond her immediate neighbors, and her partnership with Syria and Hizballah, Iran has also already cultivated ties with Yemen, Sudan, and Eritrea, on the Red Sea, including arms sales and the facilitation of terrorist activity. Her political initiatives outside the region have continued to spread in the last fifteen years, and include
North Korea,
Venezuela, and
Cuba.
Tehran
is not likely to try to achieve everything by her own efforts. She is likely to seek, determinedly, to be in the driver’s seat, when collaborating with
Russia or
China. The opportunities for collaboration in some projects are obvious: e.g., gaining control of the Strait of Hormuz, a natural fit for
Russia, or acquiring basing options on the Red Sea, where
China would be a useful partner. In all such potential moves, however, the lesson of Cold War deterrence, for a nation like
Iran, is that being a nuclear power induces
America to self-constrain, which produces benefits for the plans of rivals.
East Europeans, Koreans, Cubans, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Angolans, Somalis, Ethiopians – in a long list of nations, America’s essentially deterrable posture was a key factor in the decision of the Soviet Union to seek power abroad, support proxies in doing so, and consolidate it – brutally – against local resistance.
The relevance of this reminder is exemplified by
Israel . . . .
Israel does have nuclear weapons. But they don’t give her any good options for dealing proactively with a scenario in which
Iran is slowly squeezing
Israel’s great-power patron out of the
Middle East. If
Russia is also challenging
US power in Europe and the Mediterranean,
Israel’s situation could become very grim.
Of course, Israelis are not the only people we care about in the
Middle East. It would be as bad for Bahrainis, Kuwaitis, Iraqis, and Emiratis to fall under Tehran-oriented radical theocracies – or to spend years in a torturous, bullet-ridden limbo, like the much-tried Lebanese – as for the Israelis’ position to deteriorate.
Israel is unique, however, in operating from a Western perspective. Out of all the nations in the Middle East, it is
Israel we can expect to see the outlines of regional politics, and current predicaments, in much the same light we do. We can, in fact, be quite sure
Israel has already recognized the utility of nuclear weapons to
Iran for deterring the
United States, and gradually rendering us impotent in the region. . . . Israelis are among the most clear-sighted analysts of the actual dynamics of the Cold War; and it is no trick for them to recognize that an incremental approach by Iran, one that relies on America’s well-demonstrated deterrability, is more insidious, more likely, and ultimately more alarming than the prospect of precipitate nuclear attack.
. . . We can be fairly certain that, in the absence of a transformative regime change in
Iran, its current leaders will seek to achieve a hegemonic power in the region, and to exclude the
US from it.
Israel has reasons to regard this as an existentially threatening prospect. America, for our own reasons, should see it as a threat to our national, as well as economic, security.
Absolutely essential reading.
