Unthinkable (76 page)

16.
 “N. Korea Threatens S. Korean Leader's Office over Drills,” Associated Press, November 24, 2011.

17.
 For those interested, see my defense of Israel as one of America's most important interests in the Middle East, in Pollack,
A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East
(New York: Random House, 2008), pp. 24–49. And for an example of the scurrilous attacks against me motivated by my commitment to the U.S.-Israel relationship, see Max Rodenbeck's front-page review of that book in the
New York Times
Sunday book review: Max Rodenbeck, “War and Peace,”
New York Times Book Review
, August 22, 2008, p. 1.

1.
 The list of publications related to deterrence theory is too long to present comprehensively. The classics of the field (most of which retain relevance to questions of deterrence as part of a wider strategy of containment) include Bernard Brodie,
Strategy in the Missile Age
(Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1958); Lawrence Freedman,
Deterrence
(New York: Wiley, 2004); Lawrence Freedman,
The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy
, 3rd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Alexander George and Richard Smoke,
Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice
(New York: Columbia University Press 1974); Robert Jervis,
Perception and Misperception in International Politics
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 58–111; Herman Kahn,
Thinking About the Unthinkable
(New York: Horizon Press, 1962); Patrick Morgan,
Deterrence: A Conceptual Analysis
(Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1977); Patrick Morgan,
Deterrence Now
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Thomas Schelling,
The Strategy of Conflict
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960); John Steinbruner, “Beyond Rational Deterrence: The Struggle for New Conceptions,”
World Politics
28 (January 1976): 223–45; Albert Wohlstetter, “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” P-1472, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif., November 1958.

2.
 For some of the more important works on extended deterrence, see Paul K. Huth,
Extended Deterrence and the Prevention of War
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988); Paul Huth and Bruce Russett, “What Makes Deterrence Work?
Cases from 1900 to 1980,”
World Politics
36 (July 1984); Robert Jervis, “Deterrence Theory Revisited,”
World Politics
31, No. 2 (January 1979): 289–324; Robert Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow, and Janice Gross Stein,
Psychology and Deterrence
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, “Rational Deterrence Theory: I Think, Therefore I Deter,”
World Politics
41(1989): 208–24; Kathleen MacInnis, “Extended Deterrence: The U.S. Credibility Gap in the Middle East,”
Washington Quarterly
28, No. 3 (Summer 2005): 169–86; Thomas Schelling,
Arms and Influence
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966); Glenn H. Snyder,
Deterrence and Defense: Toward a Theory of National Security
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961); Kenneth Watman and Dean Wilkening, with John Arquila and Brian Nichiporuk, “U.S. Regional Deterrence Strategies,” MR490, RAND Corporation, 1995; Dean Wilkening and Kenneth Watman, “Nuclear Deterrence in a Regional Context,” MR 500, RAND Corporation, 1995.

3.
 Bernard Brodie, ed.,
The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1946).

4.
 Bernard Brodie, “The Development of Nuclear Strategy,”
International Security
2, No. 4 (Spring 1978): 66.

5.
 Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better,” Adelphi Paper No. 171 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981); Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz,
The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed
, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 2002).

6.
 Bret Stephens, “Iran Cannot be Contained,”
Commentary
130, No. 1 (July/August 2010): 61–70.

7.
 Richard L. Kugler, “An Extended Deterrence Regime to Counter Iranian Nuclear Weapons: Issues and Options,” Defense and Technology Paper No. 67, Center for Technology and National Security Policy, National Defense University, September 2009, p. 22.

8.
 David Menashri, “Iran's Regional Policy: Between Radicalism and Pragmatism,”
Journal of International Affairs
60, No. 2 (Spring/Summer 2007): 159–64.

9.
 Paul Bracken,
The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics
(New York: Times Books, 2012); Keith B. Payne,
Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996); Keith B. Payne,
The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence and a New Direction
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001).

10.
 David Crist,
The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran
(New York: Penguin Press, 2012), pp. 343–44.

11.
 Ibid., p. 356.

12.
 Ibid., p. 386.

13.
 David Menashri, “Iran's Regional Policy: Between Radicalism and Pragmatism,”
Journal of International Affairs
60, No. 2 (Spring/Summer 2007): 156.

14.
 David Patrikarakos,
Nuclear Iran: The Birth of an Atomic State
(London: Tauris, 2012), pp. 181, 185–86, 188–91, 193–201. Also see Asr Iran and Raja News, February 20, 2007,
http://www.asriran.com/view.php?id=12170
, translated and cited in Hassan Daioleslam, “Iran's 2003 Grand Bargain Offer: Secrets, Lies, and Manipulation,” In Search of Truth website, June 25, 2008, available at
http://english.iranianlobby.com/page1.php?id=10&bakhsh=ARTICLES
.

15.
 Crist,
The Twilight War
, pp. 514–15.

16.
 See the remarkable list of statements by senior American officials affirming Washington's confidence in Pakistani nuclear security procedures in Paul K. Kerr and Mary Beth Nikitin, “Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation and Security Issues,” RL34248, Congressional Research Service, February 13, 2013, pp. 15–17.

17.
 For instance, throughout the Cold War, the United States deployed tactical nuclear weapons to various NATO countries like Germany and Turkey with only the flimsiest security, making it highly likely and incredibly easy for the local government to have seized control of the weapons and launched them had they wanted to do so. Indeed, some in a position to know have argued that this was done purposefully by the United States so that the Soviets would have to fear that if they invaded Western Europe the NATO countries themselves would have been able to launch nuclear weapons at Russia regardless of what Washington wanted to do. This helped to avoid the dilemma of extended deterrence (would an American president use nuclear weapons to defend Germany or Greece when doing so would likely result in the incineration of New York or Chicago?) but constituted a phenomenally reckless approach to the security of nuclear weapons. No other country has ever behaved so irresponsibly with nuclear weapons. See Bracken,
The Second Nuclear Age
, pp. 62–63.

18.
 See, for instance, Roger Cohen, “Contain and Constrain Iran,”
New York Times
, November 14, 2011; Bill Keller, “Nuclear Mullahs,”
New York Times
, September 9, 2012; James M. Lindsay and Ray Takeyh, “Lindsay and Takeyh Reply,”
Foreign Affairs
89, No. 4 (July/August 2010): 168; Will Marshall, “Yes, We can Contain Iran,”
ForeignPolicy.com
, March 16, 2012, available at
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/16/yes_we_can_contain_iran
; Paul Pillar, “We Can Live with a Nuclear Iran,”
Washington Monthly
, March/April 2012, available at
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/marchapril_2012/features/we_can_live_with_a_nuclear_ira035772.php
;
Barry R. Posen, “We Can Live with a Nuclear Iran,”
New York Times
, February 27, 2006; Fareed Zakaria, “Zakaria: Iran Is a ‘Rational Actor,' ”
CNN.com
, March 8, 2012, available at
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/08/zakaria-iran-is-a-rational-actor/
.

19.
 See for instance, Shahram Chubin, “Extended Deterrence and Iran,”
Strategic Insights
8, No. 5 (December 2009); Shireen T. Hunter,
Iran after Khomeini
(New York: Praeger, 1992); Suzanne Maloney, “Thinking the Unthinkable: The Gulf States and the Prospect of a Nuclear Iran,” Middle East Memo No. 27, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution, January 2013, pp. 10–12; David Menashri,
Post-Revolutionary Politics in Iran: Religion, Society, and Power
(London: Frank Cass, 2001), esp. chapters 7 and 8; Menashri, “Iran's Regional Policy,” p. 155; Ray Takeyh,
Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic
(New York: Times Books, 2006), esp. pp. 140–41; Frederic Wehrey, David E. Thale, Nora Bensahel, Kim Cragin, Jerrold D. Green, Dalia Dassa Kaye, Nadia Oweidat, and Jennifer Li,
Dangerous but Not Omnipotent: Exploring the Reach and Limitations of Iranian Power in the Middle East
(Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2009), pp. 83, 157.

20.
 Karim Sadjadpour, “Iran Is ‘Years Away' from a Nuclear Weapon,” interview on MSNBC, available at
http://carnegie-mec.org/publications/?fa=47464
.

21.
 See, for example, Louis René Beres and General (USAF, ret.) John T. Chain, “Israel and Iran at the Eleventh Hour,” Oxford University Press blog, February 23, 2012, available at
http://blog.oup.com/2012/02/israel-iran-nuclear/
; “Ex-Mossad Chief: Iran Rational; Don't Attack Now,” interview with Meir Dagan for CBS News
60 Minutes,
available at
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57393715/ex-mossad-chief-iran-rational-dont-attack-now/
; Yair Evron, “An Israel-Iran Balance of Nuclear Deterrence: Seeds of Instability,” in
Israel and a Nuclear Iran: Implications for Arms Control, Deterrence, and Defense
, INSS Memorandum No. 94, July 2008, p. 52; Reuven Pedatzur, “Israel Can Deter Iran,” Al-Monitor, translated by Sandy Bloom, October 9, 2012, available at
http://m.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/01/10/the-iranian-threat-against-israe.html
.

22.
 Amos Harel, “IDF Chief to Haaretz: I Do Not Believe Iran Will Decide to Develop Nuclear Weapons,”
Haaretz
, April 25, 2012.

23.
 “Ashkenazi: Iran Is Radical, but Not Irrational—It May Still Curb Nukes,”
Haaretz,
November 10, 2009.

24.
 Yair Evron, “An Israel-Iran Balance of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 52.

25.
 See, for instance, Eric S. Edelman, Andrew F. Krepinevich, and Evan
Braden Montgomery, “The Dangers of a Nuclear Iran,”
Foreign Affairs
90, No. 1 (January/February 2011): 73–74.

26.
 Matthew Kroenig, “Time to Attack Iran,”
Foreign Affairs
91, No. 1 (January/February 2012): 78.

27.
 Bracken,
The Second Nuclear Age
, pp. 77, 125–26.

28.
 Ibid., pp. 125–26.

29.
 Also see Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky,
KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev
(New York: HarperCollins, 1991), pp. 583–605; Gordon Brook-Shepherd,
The Storm Birds: The Dramatic Stories of the Top Soviet Spies Who Have Defected Since World War II
(New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), pp. 329–30; Benjamin B. Fischer, “A Cold War Conundrum: The 1983 Soviet War Scare,” Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, March 2007, available at
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/a-cold-war-conundrum/source.htm#ft12
; Geoffrey Smith,
Reagan and Thatcher
(New York: Norton, 1991), pp. 122–23; and Nicholas Bethell,
Spies and Other Secrets: Memoirs from the Second Cold War
(New York: Viking, 1994), p. 191.

30.
 Andrew and Gordievsky,
KGB,
p. 605.

31.
 Ron Suskind,
The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).

32.
 Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney,
In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir
(New York: Threshold Editions, 2011), p. 388.

1.
 Eric S. Edelman, Andrew F. Krepinevich, and Evan Braden Montgomery, “The Dangers of a Nuclear Iran,”
Foreign Affairs
90, No. 1 (January/February 2011): 75; Bret Stephens, “Iran Cannot be Contained,”
Commentary
130, No. 1 (July/August 2010): 61–70.

2.
 Karim Sadjadpour and Diane de Gramont, “Reading Kennan in Tehran,”
Foreign Affairs
90, No. 2 (March/April 2011).

3.
 Edelman, Krepinevich, and Montgomery, “The Dangers of a Nuclear Iran,” p. 78.

4.
 Paul K. Kerr and Mary Beth Nikitin, “Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation and Security Issues,” RL34248, Congressional Research Service, February 13, 2013, pp. 15–16; Bruce Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House,” Center for the Advanced Study of India, Policy Paper Series, 2002, available at
http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/research/kargil/reidel.pdf
; Strobe Talbott,
Engaging India: Diplomacy,
Democracy, and the Bomb
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), pp. 161–62.