Unthinkable (56 page)

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any Americans think containment is a defensive strategy. That is understandable, but incorrect. Although one aspect of containment's purpose is the defensive aim of preventing the target country from expanding its power beyond its borders, the other is the offensive one of seeing a change of regime in the target country at some point in time. Even within the defensive piece of containment strategy, however, there can and should be offensive tactics. None of the many containment strategies that the United States has employed since the Second World War has been wholly defensive, although some have been more so than others.

The archetypal American containment experience was, of course, the forty-six-year containment of the Soviet Union. This was the challenge for which George Kennan formulated the strategy, and many others, most notably Dean Acheson, Paul Nitze, Henry Kissinger, and Ronald Reagan, added important features. Nevertheless, as the great historian of the Cold War John Lewis Gaddis details in his seminal work
Strategies
of Containment
, at various points during the Cold War the United States employed different variations on the general theme of containment, some of which were more defensive in nature and others more offensive.

During the 1970s era of détente, American policy was more focused on shoring up the defensive aspects of containment, whereas during the 1980s (partly in response to the tenor of American strategy in the prior decade) the United States focused more on the offensive aspects of containment. On the defensive side, the tactics consisted of nuclear deterrence itself, the conventional military preparations to block a Soviet invasion of either Europe or northeast Asia, information operations and covert programs to prevent the Soviets from subverting key Western countries, and the widespread effort to shore up governments friendly to the West (some of them unsavory) throughout the Third World. The offensive side of the containment of the USSR featured information operations to boost Eastern European unhappiness with the Soviet empire, economic sanctions to hinder Soviet growth and technological development, diplomatic moves to increase the number of threats that the USSR faced, and a widespread effort to undermine Soviet allies and client states in the Third World through both military and nonmilitary means.

America's containment campaigns against other countries featured some applications of the basic strategy that were more defensive in nature, and others more offensive. Our containment strategies toward North Korea after 1953 and Cuba after 1962 were more defense-oriented even than our approach to the Soviet Union itself. We put comprehensive sanctions in place against both, isolated them diplomatically as best we could, pushed back hard on Cuba's allies in Latin America, and ensured that North Korea could not overrun the South, but otherwise left them alone. In contrast, America's containment of the Sandinistas' Nicaragua and Saddam's Iraq entailed enormous pressure on both regimes. Against Nicaragua, the United States supported an insurgency effectively and overtly and considered direct military moves like mining its harbors. Against Iraq, the United States imposed comprehensive economic sanctions, an aggressive covert action program to overthrow Saddam, backed
various opposition groups waging irregular wars against his regime, and mounted periodic air campaigns, rising to strikes on a near-daily basis after 1998. Indeed, America's containment of Iraq was far, far more aggressive than any other containment regime. It was one containment regime where the emphasis was much more on speeding the collapse of the regime than it was on preventing the regime from expanding its power beyond its borders—although the United States expended considerable energy and resources doing that as well. Our containment of Libya, Syria, Vietnam for several decades after 1975, and China in the 1950s and '60s fell somewhere between these extremes.

So too has America's containment of Iran oscillated between a more defensive and a more offensive focus. In truth, Washington tended to take its lead from Tehran in this matter. Since the Iranian Revolution, U.S. policymakers have mostly regarded Iran as an unnecessary headache and have tried to have as little to do with it as they could. That was why the Reagan administration was so reticent to get into a fight with the Iranian military in the Persian Gulf, why Clinton explicitly chose to contain Iran passively compared to its aggressive containment of Iraq, and why Bush 43 went after Iraq and Afghanistan but could barely formulate a policy toward Iran. Iran has often been put in the “too hard” category of American foreign policy. In so doing, we have ceded the initiative to the Iranians.

If the United States continues to pursue containment toward a future nuclear Iran, we will have to continue to employ both offensive and defensive aspects of containment, and at times may need to focus more on the offensive aspects and other times concentrate primarily on its defensive features. However, what must change is our tendency to cede the initiative to the Iranians and react to their behavior. This is important because a nuclear Iran will present greater threats and challenges to the region than in the past, and the United States will need to regularly gauge whether it is better for our own interests and those of our allies to take a more defensive or a more offensive posture toward Iran. Some of that will be based on opportunities—opportunities to push for regime change
as well as opportunities to shore up various defenses. Yet another part should be designed to shape Iran's behavior as best we can to help minimize the inherent problems of containment: the potential for expanded Iranian subversion and irregular warfare, the potential for more crises with Iran, and the potential for proliferation in particular.

Figure 1: The Dangers of a Nuclearizing Iran

There are many reasons for Washington to continuously reassess and recalibrate the offensive and defensive aspects of its containment of Iran. However, one of the most important is the need to dissuade Iran from fielding an actual nuclear arsenal even after it achieves the capability to do so quickly. In the end, containment might mean containing a nuclear Iran, even one with an actual nuclear arsenal. While that may prove necessary, it would be undesirable. It would be far safer and easier instead to contain Iran if it were limited to a theoretical breakout capability, even a relatively narrow one. The difference in the dangers posed by an Iran with a breakout capacity of even a month or two and an Iran with a deployed nuclear arsenal is greater than the difference between Iran without a
breakout capability at all and Iran with a breakout capacity.
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It is also another reason why containment cannot become mere appeasement—allowing Iran to build and do whatever it wants as long as it does not employ nuclear weapons.

If Iran has only a breakout capability, all of the problems of containment discussed in the previous chapter vanish. Think about it: As long as Iran does not have actual weapons and only a potential ability to assemble one or more in a matter of months (or possibly weeks), there is not even a theoretical danger that Iran would use one against Israel or Saudi Arabia or anyone else. By definition, it cannot do so until after it has broken out of the treaty and assembled the weapons, and that provides at least some time for the rest of the world to do something about it. Again, as long as the threat of sanctions, isolation, force, or other factors convinces Iran not to exercise its breakout option, that will continue to be the case. For those who worry that Iran would give nuclear weapons to terrorists, in this situation there are no weapons to give. There would be radioactive material that Iran might give to terrorists, but Tehran has had that capability for at least a decade and has never chosen to do so.

If Iran has no deployed nuclear arsenal there should be no fear of an accidental launch or accidental detonation of one. Likewise, there is no danger of a bureaucratic or operational mistake—or someone exceeding orders or authority—during a nuclear alert in the midst of a nuclear crisis. Indeed, if Iran has never tested an actual weapon, it would probably be far more wary of getting into any situation in which it might feel the need to use one quickly for fear that the design will prove faulty.

If Iran did not have the capacity to threaten with its nuclear arsenal—either directly or as the ultimate force behind its unconventional warfare operations—there would be even less reason to fear other Middle Eastern states bandwagoning with it. As we have seen with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, all of whom have breakout capabilities, a theoretical capacity to build a nuclear arsenal does not endow countries with the kind of awe, fear, and prestige that sway people's thinking. Likewise, India's standing before 1998 suggests that even a demonstrated capability to produce
and detonate a nuclear weapon does not bring anything like the same political-psychological benefits as possession of an actual arsenal.

The proliferation problem declines precipitously if Iran can be convinced not to weaponize. First, if Iran has only a theoretical capability and not a deployed arsenal, other countries will feel much less of a need to have their own arsenal. To the extent that they feel those pressures, they might only look to develop a theoretical capability. Japan's development of a theoretical breakout capability did not goad anyone to do the same—although China's actual arsenal spurred India's program and India's did the same for Pakistan (which got help from China). Moreover, the fact that Iran will have chosen not to cross that last threshold will help reinforce the disincentives that have kept other countries from doing so. If a regime as callous and willing to accept costs as Iran chose not to pay such a price, then why should other countries who value the prosperity of their citizens far more?

If Iran were to stick with a breakout capability rather than fielding an actual arsenal, it would also tell us some important things about Tehran's thinking. It would indicate that Iran's goal was only to acquire the capability to deter attack on Iran itself, since that is all that such a breakout capability is good for. Yes, anyone can devise convoluted scenarios whereby the Iranians do things and sequence events in ways that allow them to surprise everyone with a weapon at the right moment, but in the real world such schemes are bureaucratically, operationally, and technically implausible. We would not know if that had always been Tehran's aim, or they were convinced to fall back to such a minimal deterrent option by the pressure they faced, but we could assume that at that time, a minimal deterrent for homeland defense was all they wanted.

Whatever Iranian intentions were when they first set out down the nuclear path, if they stop with a breakout capability it also suggests that something stopped them—sanctions, international isolation, the threat of a military strike, or something else. We would not know which, but we could assume that it was one or some combination of them. Even if Iran had never wanted anything other than the capability to defend itself
against attack, there would be no reason to stop with a breakout capability if there were no cost to proceeding to an actual arsenal. Taiwan, South Korea, Argentina, and other countries that have stopped with what amounts to a breakout capability all did so because of the price to be paid by going further. If Iran were not concerned about that price, why stop? This would demonstrate that the Iranian regime actually was sensitive to some degree of external resistance, which should give us confidence that Tehran would only move to full weaponization if they had reason to believe that the externally imposed cost no longer applied, or if the regime had a newly compelling reason to weaponize that suddenly made it willing to absorb that cost in a way that it wasn't in the past.

CRISIS MANAGEMENT AND A NONWEAPONIZED IRAN.
The problem of crisis management also becomes far, far easier if Iran has only a theoretical breakout capacity rather than a deployed arsenal. In any situation where Iran is not the instigator of the problem and it has not specifically chosen beforehand to use the crisis to transition from a breakout capability to an actual arsenal, its latent nuclear capability becomes irrelevant. As it would take Iran weeks or months to assemble a nuclear weapon, that capability would not be germane to the crisis at hand. Iran would not be able to threaten anyone with its nuclear forces because it won't have any. It can't even threaten uncontrollable escalation because it would not be able to escalate to the nuclear level. The dangerous and perplexing problems of nuclear crisis management would not be present. Which also means that both before and after crises, the two sides would not have to go through the expensive and destabilizing rigmarole of preparing for a potential nuclear crisis, with all of its attendant risks, complexities, and dangers. The dangers of nuclear crisis management would not have to drive strategy, force structure, arms purchases, doctrine, operating procedures, or decision-making because the crises wouldn't be nuclear. That would be an enormously beneficial state of affairs.