[Mb-civic] An Iranian Missile Crisis? - David Ignatius - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

An Iranian Missile Crisis?
<>
By David Ignatius
The Washington Post
Wednesday, April 12, 2006; A17

The emerging confrontation between the United States and Iran is "the 
Cuban missile crisis in slow motion," argues Graham Allison, the Harvard 
University professor who wrote the classic study of President John F. 
Kennedy's 1962 showdown with the Soviet Union that narrowly averted 
nuclear war. If anything, that analogy understates the potential risks here.

President Bush tried to calm the war fever Monday, describing stories 
about military contingency plans for bombing Iran that appeared last 
weekend in The Post and the New Yorker as "wild speculation." But those 
stories did no more than flesh out the strategic options that might be 
necessary to back up the administration's public pledge, in its National 
Security Strategy, "to block the threats posed" by Iran and its nuclear 
program.

The administration insists that it wants diplomacy to do the preemption, 
even as its military planners are studying how to take out Iran's 
nuclear facilities if diplomacy should fail. Iran, meanwhile, is 
pursuing its own version of preemption, announcing yesterday that it has 
begun enriching uranium -- a crucial first step toward making a bomb. 
Neither side wants war -- who in his right mind would? -- but both frame 
choices in ways that make war increasingly likely.

The impasse was summarized by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, in a 
quote attributed to a Pentagon adviser: "The bottom line is that Iran 
cannot become a nuclear-weapons state. The problem is that the Iranians 
realize that only by becoming a nuclear state can they defend themselves 
against the U.S."

Allison argues that Bush's dilemma is similar to the one that confronted 
Kennedy in 1962. His advisers are telling him that he may face a stark 
choice -- either to acquiesce in the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a 
dangerous adversary, or risk war to stop that nuclear fait accompli . 
Hard-liners warned JFK that alternative courses of action would only 
delay the inevitable day of reckoning, and Bush is probably hearing 
similar advice now.

Kennedy's genius was to reject the Cuba options proposed by his 
advisers, hawk and dove alike, and choose his own peculiar 
outside-the-box strategy. He issued a deadline but privately delayed it; 
he answered a first, flexible message from Soviet Premier Nikita 
Khrushchev but not a second unyielding one; he said he would never take 
U.S. missiles out of Turkey, as the Soviets were demanding, and then 
secretly did precisely that. Disaster was avoided because Khrushchev 
believed Kennedy was willing to risk war -- but wanted to avoid it.

The Bush administration needs to be engaged in a similar exercise in 
creative thinking. The military planners will keep looking for targets 
(as they must, in a confrontation this serious). But Bush's advisers -- 
and most of all, the president himself -- must keep searching for ways 
to escape the inexorable logic that is propelling America and Iran 
toward war. I take heart from the fact that the counselor to Secretary 
of State Condoleezza Rice, Philip Zelikow, is an expert on the Cuban 
missile crisis who co-authored the second edition of Allison's "Essence 
of Decision."

What worries me is that the relevant historical analogy may not be the 
1962 war that didn't happen, but World War I, which did. The march 
toward war in 1914 resulted from the tight interlocking of alliances, 
obligations, perceived threats and strategic miscalculations. The 
British historian Niall Ferguson argued in his book "The Pity of War" 
that Britain's decision to enter World War I was a gross error of 
judgment that cost that nation its empire.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser to President 
Jimmy Carter, makes a similar argument about Iran. "I think of war with 
Iran as the ending of America's present role in the world," he told me 
this week. "Iraq may have been a preview of that, but it's still 
redeemable if we get out fast. In a war with Iran, we'll get dragged 
down for 20 or 30 years. The world will condemn us. We will lose our 
position in the world."

Brzezinski urges President Bush to slow down and think carefully about 
his options -- rather than rushing to stop Iran's nuclear program, which 
by most estimates is five to 10 years away from building a bomb, even 
after yesterday's announcement. "Time is on our side," says Brzezinski. 
"The mullahs aren't the future of Iran, they're the past." As the United 
States carefully weighs its options, there is every likelihood that the 
strategic picture will improve.

The Bush administration has demonstrated, in too many ways, that it's 
better at starting fights than finishing them. It shouldn't make that 
same mistake again. Threats of war will be more convincing if they come 
slowly and reluctantly, when it has become clear that truly there is no 
other choice.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/11/AR2006041101078.html
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