Or, Maybe We Could Just Shut Up

Via Matt Yglesias, Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations argues that “the best manner of ensuring the cause of disarmament in Iran is to explicitly take the use of force off the table.” Matt remarks, “I agree.” I don’t. Let me explain why.

Takeyh frames the decision as binary: Either come swaggering into the room with your thumbs tucked into your belt loops, chin up, saying something silly like “bring ‘em on,” or, in Takeyh’s telling, there’s a straightforward policy of unilateral, conditionless engagement that Takeyh describes in more detail in this Foreign Affairs piece.

But what Takeyh and Yglesias ignore is that there is another alternative: just shutting up about the military option altogether. It should not need to be said that politicians–and diplomats in particular–are masters at deflection and obfuscation. So it seems to me altogether better just to stop talking about the military option, while leaving the concept, unspoken, to percolate in the mullahs’ minds.

First, the mullahs do not want to be bombed. (You can make an abominably cynical case that they do want to be bombed, in order for them to have an excuse to do away with any domestic dissent and opposition, but I think this is unlikely.) Thus, in any calculation where that unhappy outcome is possible, even if not probable and unspoken, it should bear against any options that would be thought to lead to being bombed.

Second, it seems unlikely that with the military option off the table the mullahs are going to feel all too inclined to make concessions of their own. With it off the table, there are going to be a host of regional implications, the Egyptians and the Saudis seem likely to kick-start their own nuclear programs, the soft panic that’s set in over Iran’s enhanced position in the region seems likely to get worse.

But the real problem with putting the military option on the table is one that Takeyh overlooks: It creates a crisis of credibility, constraining our options should we find ourselves at the threshold of a nuclear Iran. Put another way, if we’ve been waving around the military option, sending multiple carrier battle groups to the Persian Gulf to *ahem* “reassure our allies of our commitment to the region,” it’s going to look like a pretty awful, shameful climbdown if you find yourself all of a sudden acquiescing to an Iranian nuclear capability. It serves to constrain your options unless you’re willing to countenance a fairly significant crisis of credibility.

All told, it seems to me that the best thing to do about the military option is neither to put it on the table nor take it off. How about just shutting up about it?

Comments

[Grant Gould]

I think you've pretty much got it right. Iran's leadership (and can we stop the glib glomping of all the comically many branches of Iran's government into "the mullahs"? Ahmadinejad is not a mullah. Most of the Iranian government and the Iranian political elite aren't.) already knows that the US is fully equipped with bombs and whatnot. That the US is massively dangerous is not a point of subtle comprehension in international affairs.

The purpose of war talk is not to scare Iran, which is quite capable of examining its own available outcomes. Rather, the war talk is to prime the US public to accept the war when it comes.

[Nick Danger]

What's our best option for getting the US to disarm?

[Pithlord]

I basically agree with you, but I don't think it is at all improbable that the A-man and his faction want to be bombed. They know that Iraq-style regime change is off the table and a bombing just helps them domestically and probably internationally as well

[rea]

In a perfect world, you'd be right. Unfortunately, the only modes in which the present administration operates are (1) bellicose macho posturing and, (2) cringing obsequiousness. They don't do the middle grounds thing--maybe President Obama will be able to pull it off.