Unthinkable (77 page)

5.
 For more on both the causes of these problems and how best to address them, see Kenneth M. Pollack,
A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East
(New York: Random House, 2008); Kenneth M. Pollack et al.,
The Arab Awakening: America and the Transformation of the Middle East
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2011). For a concurring opinion, see Sadjadpour and de Gramont, “Reading Kennan in Tehran.”

6.
 Although it is a tall order, the need to combat Iranian support for terrorism, insurgencies, and other subversive efforts would also put a premium on securing a comprehensive peace between Arabs and Israelis to remove that as a source of animosity that Iran regularly exploits. See 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. 59.

7.
 I have written extensively on what needs to be done in the Arab world, how to go about doing it, and the difficulties of doing so. See in particular, Pollack,
A Path Out of the Desert,
esp. pp. 246–329.

8.
 For other authors agreeing that crisis management—and the associated risk of miscalculation—are the greatest danger stemming from a nuclear Iran, see Shahram Chubin, “Extended Deterrence and Iran,”
Strategic Insights
8, No. 5 (December 2009); Edelman, Krepinevich, and Montgomery, “The Dangers of a Nuclear Iran,” pp. 67–69; Evron, “An Israel-Iran Balance of Nuclear Deterrence: Seeds of Instability,” p. 60; 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. 14; Barry Rubin, “The Right Kind of Containment,”
Foreign Affairs
89, No. 4 (July/August 2010): 164.

9.
 Thomas Donnelly, Danielle Pletka, and Maseh Zarif, “Containing and Deterring a Nuclear Iran: Questions for Strategy, Requirements for Military Forces,” American Enterprise Institute, December 2011,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_documents/111205_AEI%20Iran%20report%20text%20final%20Dec%206%202011.pdf
, p. 25.

10.
 Thomas Blanton, “The Annals of Blinksmanship,”
Wilson Quarterly
21, No. 3 (Summer 1997): 93.

11.
 Graham Allison, “The Cuban Missile Crisis at 50,”
Foreign Affairs
91, No. 4 (July/August 2012): 11; Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy
Naftali,
“One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy 1958
–1
964
(New York: Norton, 1997), p. 242. In their subsequent book, Fursenko and Naftali write that the Soviets immediately countermanded the authorization for the local commander to employ tactical nuclear weapons and had authorized him to employ only conventional munitions (including nuclear-capable systems). See Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali,
Khrushchev's Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary
(New York: Norton, 2006), p. 473.

12.
 I have discussed this concept of a regional security architecture for the Persian Gulf in greater length in Kenneth M. Pollack, “Securing the Gulf,”
Foreign Affairs
82, No. 4 (July/August 2003): 2–16.

13.
 Rafsanjani explained, “Israel is much smaller than Iran in land mass, and therefore far more vulnerable to nuclear attack.” He went on to point out that a nuclear attack on Israel would obliterate the state, but the Israeli retaliation would only cause “damage” to the much larger Muslim world.
Jerusalem Report
, March 11, 2002.

14.
 For a concurring Israeli assessment, see Evron, “An Israel-Iran Balance of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 60.

15.
 On the dangers of the “use or it or lose it” logic if Iran acquires a nuclear capability, see Edelman, Krepinevich, and Montgomery, “The Dangers of a Nuclear Iran,” pp. 67–69; James Lindsay and Ray Takeyh, “After Iran Gets the Bomb,”
Foreign Affairs
89, No. 2 (March/April 2010): 39.

16.
 On these various points, see for instance, Richard K. Betts, “A Nuclear Golden Age: The Balance Before Parity,”
International Security
11, No. 3 (Winter, 1986–1987): 3–32; Fursenko and Naftali,
Khrushchev's Cold War
; Peter J. Roman,
Eisenhower and the Missile Gap
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995), esp. pp. 66–79; William C. Wohlforth,
The Elusive Balance of Power: Power and Perceptions During the Cold War
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), esp. pp. 161–70.

17.
 Fursenko and Naftali,
“One Hell of a Gamble,”
pp. 170–72, 177–83, esp. p. 182; Fursenko and Naftali,
Khrushchev's Cold War
, pp. 483–86.

18.
 The Cuban Missile Crisis was infinitely more complex than what I have just noted in these sentences. My point is not to oversimplify the crisis, or even to suggest that one aspect of it was the most important part of it. Instead, it is to note that American escalation dominance was one of a number of important aspects of the crisis—in triggering it, driving decisions, and ultimately resolving it favorably from the American perspective. Therefore, it too illustrates the value of retaining escalation dominance if possible.

19.
 Bracken treats this history nicely and makes this point explicitly. See
Bracken,
The Second Nuclear Age
, esp. pp. 41, 99, 196–98. Also see the detailed treatment of the Soviet side of all the different crises from 1954 to 1962 in Fursenko and Naftali,
Khrushchev's Cold War
.

20.
 For fuller explications of these arguments by some truly exceptional strategic thinkers, see Bracken,
The Second Nuclear Age
, pp. 245–70; Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy,”
Foreign Affairs
85, No. 2 (March/April 2006):42–54; Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, “The End of Mad? The Nuclear Dimension of U.S. Primacy,”
International Security
30, No. 4 (Spring 2006): 7–44; Payne,
The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence
, pp. 97–196.

21.
 Kori Schake, “Dealing with a Nuclear Iran,”
Policy Review
, No. 142 (April/May 2007).

22.
 Evron, “An Israel-Iran Balance of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 50.

23.
 Bracken,
The Second Nuclear Age
, p. 137.

24.
 Ibid, p. 41.

25.
 On this entire subject, the best work by far remains the classic, Robert Jervis,
Perception and Misperception in International Politics
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976).

26.
 David S. McLellan, “Dean Acheson and the Korean War,”
Political Science Quarterly
83, No. 1 (March 1968): 16–39.

27.
 For a smart, pessimistic view, see Edelman, Krepinevich, and Montgomery, “The Dangers of a Nuclear Iran,” p. 67.

28.
 Reuel Marc Gerecht, “Should Israel Bomb Iran? Better Safe than Sorry,”
Weekly Standard
15, No. 42 (July 26, 2010).

29.
 For other highly regarded, right-wing commentators raising this problem, see Elliott Abrams, “The Grounds for an Israeli Attack,”
World Affairs
175, No. 1 (May/June 2012): 30; Edelman, Krepinevich, and Montgomery, “The Dangers of a Nuclear Iran,” p. 76; Rubin, “The Right Kind of Containment,” p. 163; Stephens, “Iran Cannot be Contained,” pp. 61–70.

30.
 See for instance, Daniel Byman and Matthew Waxman “Defeating U.S. Coercion,”
Survival
41, No. 2 (Summer 1999): 110–111; Glenn Snyder, “The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics,”
World Politics
36, No. 4 (July 1984): 461–495; Victor D. Cha,
Alignment Despite Antagonism: The United States-Korea-Japan Security Triangle
(Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 64; Anne E. Sartori,
Deterrence by Diplomacy
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005).

31.
 Jonathan Mercer,
Reputation and International Politics
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996); Daryl G. Press,
Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005).

32.
 Excerpts from Glaspie's cable to Washington providing a full readout of the meeting (a virtual transcript) are now publicly available. See “U.S. Messages on July 1990 Meeting of Hussein and American Ambassador,”
New York Times
, July 13. 1991.

33.
 On these matters, see Fursenko and Naftali,
“One Hell of a Gamble,”
pp. 128–34, 170–72, 177–83, 227; Fursenko and Naftali,
Khrushchev's Cold War
, pp. 416–21, 483–86; Frederick Kempe,
Berlin 1961
(New York: Penguin, 2011), p. 247.

34.
 Mercer,
Reputation and International Politics
; Press,
Calculating Credibility
.

35.
 Stephen M. Walt,
The Origins of Alliances
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), esp. pp. 5–29.

36.
 Rubin, “The Right Kind of Containment,” p. 163.

37.
 Marc Lynch, “Upheaval: U.S. Policy Toward Iran in a Changing Middle East,” Center for a New American Security, June 2011, p. 14.

38.
 Edelman, Krepinevich, and Montgomery, “The Dangers of a Nuclear Iran,” pp. 67–68; Kroenig, Matthew, “Time to Attack Iran,”
Foreign Affairs
91, No. 1 (January/February 2012), pp. 78–79.

39.
 Technically, the United States maintains a presence of “1.7 aircraft carriers” near the Persian Gulf on an annual basis. This means that there is always one carrier in the Gulf itself, in the Arabian Sea, or elsewhere in the northwestern Indian Ocean. In addition, 70 percent of the time, there is a second carrier in the same area. The official figure is quoted in Spencer Ackerman, “Two U.S. Aircraft Carriers Near Iran, with a Third on the Way,”
Wired.com
, January 11, 2012, available at
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/01/iran-aircraft-carriers/
.

40.
 Thom Shanker and Steven Lee Myers, “U.S. Planning Troop Buildup in Gulf After Exit from Iraq,”
New York Times
, October 29, 2011.

41.
 See, for instance, Henri Barkey, “Turkey-Iraq Relations Deteriorate with Accusations of Sectarianism,” Al-Monitor, April 30, 2012, available at
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2012/al-monitor/turkey-iraq-ties-sour-brover-syr.html
; Kenneth M. Pollack, “Reading Machiavelli in Iraq,”
National Interest
, No. 122 (November/December 2012): 8–19.

42.
 Bruce Riedel argues that Israel could benefit from greater American assistance developing a second-strike capability. See Bruce Riedel, “If Israel Attacks,”
National Interest
, No. 109 (September/October 2010).

43.
 The most important conditions that destroyed CENTO were Washington's refusal to become a formal signatory and the 1958 Iraqi revolution. Our organization of such a treaty structure should make repeating the former unlikely, while one of our goals should be to prevent a recurrence of the latter—especially in other Gulf states.

44.
 Chubin, “Extended Deterrence and Iran.”

45.
 Clark A. Murdock and Jessica M. Yeats, “Exploring the Nuclear Posture Implications of Extended Deterrence and Assurance,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 2009, p. 11.

46.
 Dennis Healey,
The Time of My Life
(London: Michael Joseph, 1989), p. 243.

47.
 For a concurring opinion, see “Should I Stay or Should I Go Now? Assessing U.S. Force Posture in the Persian Gulf,” draft chapter for
Crude Calculus: Reexamining the Energy Security Logic of America's Military Presence in the Persian Gulf
, ed. Charles Glaser and Rose Kelanic (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, forthcoming). For a dissenting opinion, see Michael E. O'Hanlon, “How Much Does the United States Spend Protecting Persian Gulf Oil?” in Carlos Pascual and Jonathan Elkind, eds.,
Energy Security: Economics, Politics, Strategies, and Implications
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2010), pp. 70–71. O'Hanlon argues that eliminating the Persian Gulf requirement would save the United States roughly $50 billion per year because he believes that the U.S. likely would reduce its force structure if it did not have to worry about the Persian Gulf. While my respect for Mike remains undiminished, I simply disagree. I do not believe the United States would have a single fewer aircraft carriers, Army divisions, or Air Force wings if we no longer had to worry about the Persian Gulf. Since the GCC states pay for the bases and a considerable portion of the upkeep of the forces we deploy there, the only costs we pay are those for transit, hazardous-duty pay and other increased benefits, and the slightly increased maintenance costs for operating in the difficult environment of the Gulf. These costs are negligible—probably less than a few billion dollars per year—in a defense budget of $672 billion for 2013—and even then there are additional offsets to these costs.

48.
 Admiral James L. Holloway III,
Aircraft Carriers at War
(Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2007), p. xi.

49.
 For a fuller explication of my take on these matters, see Pollack,
A Path Out of the Desert
, pp. 24–49.