Iran & Nuclear Weapons

Cutting the Knot

Iran’s nuclear research program has created an ominous crisis in the Middle East. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) referred Iran’s program to the United Nations Security Council because Iran closed its program to international inspections. The United States and its allies in Europe suspect Iran of using its proclaimed “peaceful” research for developing nuclear weapons. The UN Security Council has deferred taking action on Iran’s non-compliance with its treaty obligations for the two months since IAEA referral. The lack of urgency by the Security Council has come from the reluctance of Russia and China, veto-wielding powers, to approve sanctions against Iran. The Security Council debated Iran’s uranium enrichment activity, April 28, 2006. Earlier in April, Iran announced that it successfully enriched a small amount of reactor-grade nuclear fuel. Iran admits to having 3,000 on-line enriching uranium. It needs to have 50,000 centrifuges operating one year to produce weapons-grade material. Bush Administration officials have expressed little confidence the prediction that could not manufacture a thermo-nuclear device within the next five years. A diplomatic impasse has arrived over Iran’s nuclear program.

The United States and its European allies seek economic sanctions against Iran to force that government to abandon its research program. The Bush Administration has stated very bluntly that it does not believe Iran’s claim that it only intends the peaceful production of civilian nuclear energy. Negotiations led by Russia to provide Iran with nuclear fuel for electric-generating reactors, in exchange for Iran’s end to independent development, have faltered. This, along with having hid its research program for almost two decades, gives cause to suspect that Iran pursues nuclear weapons capability. Conflict looms in the Middle East over this issue.

The longer the US and its allies delay in confronting Iran about its program, the more time Iran has to prepare for any showdown, thus making a solution short of military action more difficult. The United States needs to build immediately an international coalition to force Iran to make a decision to give up is nuclear ambitions, peaceful or otherwise. The US cannot leave Iran in possession of any capacity to produce any form of nuclear or radiological weapons. The Western democracies should give Iran’s leaders two options: Either achieve normal relations with the rest of the world and inclusion in the 21^st century civilization or face coercive action to end its program.

Iran under its current religious leaders should never have nuclear capability, peaceful or military. Iran has operated as a pariah state for 28 years, since the overthrow of Shah Reza Pahlevi, a US Cold War ally. In that space of almost three decades, US-Iranian relations have centered on non-recognition, an embargo on commerce, and violent if indirect aggression. Since Iran’s Islamic Revolution, the US at one time supported Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in its long, destructive war with Iran in the 1980s. Iran has found asymetric ways to attack American interests. In early 1980s Iranian-backed terrorists took US citizens hostage and also bombed the US embassy and Marine barracks during the US intervention in the Lebanese civil war. Iran funds, trains, and arms Hezbollah and other terrorist groups at war with the US and its ally Israel.

Opportunities for US-Iranian understanding have foundered on such stupidly conceived policies as arms-for-hostages during the Iran-Contra conspiracy. During the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton, partisan Republicans and evangelicals stopped any movement toward normalization of US-Iranian relations. This last failure happened at a time when moderate reformers held parliamentary power in Iran. Instead of supporting the moderates against the religious authoritarians, American politics torpedoed any initiative that might have helped end the reign of the radical Islamist Revolutionaries. In 2005, a candidate who had roots in the Revolutionary Guards movement became the elected President of Iran. Iranian elections only have religious-approved candidates, but in 2005 the moderate’s movement for a modern society lost any short-term hope of success. All of these misguided policies only furthered the distrust between the United States and Iranian governments.

If Iran secretly pursues nuclear armaments, and succeeds in obtaining them, then Iran will graduate from a regional power to a 21^st century of Great Power, defined by possessing nuclear weapons. An Iran so armed will create a new, complicated variable in the Middle East balance of power. With nuclear weapons Iran will hold a deterrent on military actions to disarm them. Although Iran may not reach the threshold of a functioning weapon for three, five, or by some estimates, ten years, the uncertainty of Iran’s intentions with such weapons will make the entire region unstable. Backed by either thermo-nuclear or radiological weapons (the latter easily achieved with its present research facilities), Iran will have more options in its foreign policy against US interests world-wide. Iran as one of 10 nuclear weapons-capable Great Powers will transform itself from a regional player into one with NEARLY global influence. Not only would Iran possess the ability to trump the US, as nuclear-armed North Korea has done for four years, but Iran could prove even more dangerous because of its state support of terrorism. Can the western industrial democracies find themselves hostage to nuclear blackmail? Absolutely!

The Persian Gulf, without question, constitutes a small portion of the globe with unequal importance to the planet’s stability and prosperity. Iran, empowered with the nuclear option, could disrupt the development of a democratic and peaceful Iraq, threaten the very survival of Israel, destroy the ready sources of oil needed to fuel the global economy, and provide a weapons of mass destruction (or mass disruption) to Islamist and narcotics terrorist networks. Iran could very well unhinge the entire US effort in the war against terrorists. All of these scenarios depend on a willingness of Iran’s religious authoritarians to challenge the status quo of the current international system. Iran has not acted responsibly in the past 28 years. The history of Iran’s theocratic system of government provides evidence that unlike China, India, and Israel, the Islamic Revolutions in Tehran would not act as responsible stewards of acquired nuclear weapons or Great Power status.

For almost three decades, when not trying to undermine Iran’s religious system of government, US policy has sought to contain Iran’s impact and deter its actions. Iran has caused problems for the United States and shown a political will on occasion to directly challenge US and allied interests. For example, the Persian Gulf Tanker War in 1987-88 led to open military action with the US Navy sinking Iranian navy ships. The history of distrust and suspicion on both sides, and a history of using violence to pursue political policy, leave little room for negotiation over today’s crisis.

Iran’s leaders do not act in an entirely rational manner. Their support of terrorism has cut them off from normalized relations with the West and stunted Iran’s economic development. Iran’s support of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria and Hamas in Palestine threaten Israeli security. In the early 1980s, Iran fought by proxy against the US in Lebanon. Terrorists give Iran a neat, disposable, and very cheap weapon to use in pursuing national policy. Attacking Americans and Europeans, the terrorists also undermine the confidence regional governments have in the protection America can provide against internal disorder and outside interference. Iran’s support of Shi’a political parties and their militias in Iraq keep the sectarian and ethnic conflict mounting in that country. Iran’s international participation with such anti-US governments as North Korea and Venezuela challenge US interest in other parts of the globe. Iran’s ownership of vast proven oil reserves gives it leverage over the entire world economy out of proportion to the size of its economy, and this includes its affects on the US dollar and its dollar-denominated oil payment system. Finally, Iran has found a willing friend in the People’s Republic of China, which with rising oil demand has committed to a $100 billion deal with Tehran for oil and gas development. Already, China has exerted its influence on behalf of its friend, Iran, by opposing UN Security Council action so far during the current crisis.

As a branded “rogue” nation, Iran has not received the benefits of a society openly connected to a globalizing economy. Since the overthrow of the Shah, and because of its state-sponsorship of terrorism, Iran has suffered an embargo on commerce with the US and with all US-owned companies and subsidiaries. By US law, such companies cannot legally engage in business with foreign companies which do business in or with Iran. This last provision proved unenforceable and brought forth a decade of debate about US policy toward Tehran.

Without access to US markets, technology, equipment, and expertise to modernize and diversify its oil-driven economy, Iran withered throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Just without US trade, Iran has sharply hurt its economic growth rate. The full benefits of globalization accompany commerce with the US economy. Since the mid-1990s, Iran has found benefactors in Russia for its military equipment and in China for venture capital for improving its oil industry infrastructure. These two facets of its development do not even compare with what would happen if Iran ended its international “pariah” status. Iran faces a demographic explosion of young people needing modern services and jobs, lest they grow restless. Oil has brought Iran what foreign currency reserves it has but oil cannot provide the dynamic diversification of the economy needed to satisfy its population and their needs and wants. Iran left outside of a full-participation in globalization can only threaten whatever government sits in Tehran. If Iran pursues an aggressive foreign policy it will have no choice except to create an even more rigid police state than it currently has.

Iran’s theocratic system of government, where elite religious leaders hold veto power over all decisions by the government, rules on an emotional, extremist, and doctrinaire view of Islam. The goal of the Islamic Revolution entails the rebirth of Muslim civilization under the brand of Shi’a Muslim law as interpreted by the ayatollahs in Tehran. Iran’s theocracy sees itself as the redeemer and arbiter of the law. Translated into foreign policy, Tehran seeks a revision of the international order through a revolutionary upheaval of the system, tipping the balance away from Western dominance and toward Iran’s brand of Islam. Like all revolutions, such as the French and Russian, security for the revolution at home can only become permanent when the surrounding and competing countries undergo their own revolutionary upheaval.

As in any revolution, nationalism plays just as great a role in the view of ayatollahs who run Iran’s Islamic Revolution. In the this respect, Iran has played a cautious game of political poker. Iran exports its idealism through the crusades of the terrorist against Western and Western-friendly countries. Since it narrowly lost its 1980-88 war with Iraq, Iran has not taken direct military action against other countries, using instead the weapons of propaganda, subversion, covert action, and terror networks to carry out its national policy. Iran has played a waiting game since the 1991 Gulf War. It waited patiently for Saddam Hussein, its nearby arch-enemy, to pass from power in Iraq. It waits for the Palestinian problem to occupy all of Israel’s attention and sap its strength. Iran uses the slow decay of time to erode the legitimacy of the Sunni royal family in Saudi Arabia. Iran secretly developed a functioning program to enrich uranium.

Most of all, Iran has shrewdly waited for the United States to exhaust its power in the Middle East in such adventures as Iraq and Afghanistan, two of Iran’s immediate neighbors. This last part holds the key for all of Iran’s ambitions in the Indian Ocean Basin. Tehran’s leaders know they cannot win an open contest of strength with the United States until the latter has undermined its own power by poor domestic and foreign policy choices. This conservative appraisal of national interest stems from a sound realism in assessing risk. Since 2003, Iran has allowed the United States to waste its advantages in military power in the extended and costly conflict with insurgents in Iraq and to a lesser extent in Afghanistan. Each increment of US power reduced through the attrition of personnel, material, equipment, wealth and political will increases the power, and hence the policy options, of Iran.

Iran began building its conventional military power once the costly war with Iraq ended. During that conflict, Iran had used American weapons purchased by the previous regime of the Shah to keep the Soviets out of the region. Iran could not get spare parts for its military from the United States. Iran’s pariah status also lined up other Western nations like France to support its mortal foe, Saddam Hussein.

Iran capitalized on the new reality of post-Soviet Russia, which found a ready cash market for its rotting military equipment. Tehran has purchased several billion dollars of former-Soviet and new Russian-made tanks, planes, surface ships and submarines, all manner of ground-, air-, and sea-launched missiles, a nuclear reactor (under construction in Busher which drew attention away from its secret, indigenous research) and command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, research, and surveillance assets. Throughout the period, Iran has also built logistic capability for fighting an intense war and it has also hardened many potential targets of US air strikes, including its estimated 70 underground nuclear research facilities. Finally, Iran has developed military bases through treaties with other radical powers in the Indian Ocean Basin. Tehran has military bases and rights in Sudan, directly affecting passage through the Suez Canal. It also has bases and rights in the southern African country of Mozambique, on the route direct from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. With this military build up, Iran has power, though still in inferior to the quality and quantity of the US armed forces. Since the defeat of Iraq in 1991's Desert Storm, Iran became the regional military power in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. Only India and Pakistan (with nuclear weapons) within the Indian Ocean Basin equals Iran’s ability to wage war. Iran only adds to its power by manufacturing thermo-nuclear weapons.

To either end Iran’s suspected quest for nuclear or radiological weapons or to modify its international behavior, the US and its allies have no better tool than the Iranian people themselves. From all reports (some received by the author from Iranian expatriates), the population of Iran has a quitefriendly affection for the United States, at least before the current crisis. Well-educated, located mostly in large population centers, and owning a cosmopolitan liking for conveniences, the Iranian people most likely yearn for freedom and aspire for those “inalienable rights” common to humanity.

United States policymakers can expect Iranians with such sophisticated viewpoints to want the same benefits of modernization sought by all cultures: freedom of movement and for foreign travel, better educational opportunities for their young, access to advanced medicine, availability of a safety net and social insurance, and better paying, more fulfilling jobs. The Iranian people must see all these things enjoyed by others in the established and highly developing nations in a globalized economy. They must also see that poverty, repression, natural disaster, a rough environment, lack of modern medicine, and an economy almost solely dependent on a depletable resource have provided a pessimistic forecast for the future.

With Iran left out of the advance of history, a gap in the political hopes and reality of the Iranian population leaves the West room to separate the ruled from the rulers. Encouraging the Iranian people to unity and civil disobedience against an authoritarian government has the best potential long-term solution to the problems posed by Iran’s Islamic Revolution. It may not prove a practical option immediately, or even in the short- to medium-term. In the simplicity of using hope to defeat fear, only the Iranian people withdrawing their support from the theocracy–removing legitimacy from the leadership–contains a permanent fix to a major problem in the future of the Middle East.

Hostage to the veto wielded by the religious authorities over policy, a functioning secular democracy with accountability exists in Iran’s civil administration. Iran has police, courts, public services, community leadership, and even a national legislature and president chosen by popular vote. Albeit, the candidates for such offices must obtain the approval of the religious leaders to certify their orthodoxy and support for the revolutionary principles. If the reasons and publicity of dissent in Iran took root, the functioning part of the popular, self-rule at the lower levels of civil law may become a systems virus to the central political system.

Mass dissent entails evitable changes in a society. A country dissatisfied with the existing political sharing system, economic favoritism, cultural repression, etc. sees the effects of even quiet, non-cooperative rebellion against the status quo. All revolutions stem from injustice and revolutions only become permanent when taking place in the mass of society. Changing political systems simply becomes a coup d’etat. To change Iran’s government means getting the people acting the desired way. People no longer willing to submit begins the process of change. Democratic pluralism and individual freedom hold the first, best hope for the future of the Iranian people.

The best short-term way to confront Iran over its nuclear research comes through the form sanctions and limited action. Successful sanctions must have focus. The US and a possible coalition must direct the military action to enforce the sanctions at Iran’s centers of gravity. The sanctions must constitute a “smarter” set of rules than the ones unenforceable against Iraq in the 1990s. The sanctions confronting Iraq over that country’s supposed program for weapons of mass destruction proved porous. Because the sanctions had no real backing, Iraq ably manipulated even US allies like Jordan, France and Germany, and alleged friends like Russia, to keep oil revenue going into the pockets of Saddam Hussein. For sanctions to work in the case of Iran, the violators can have no means of avoiding the restrictions on any trade with Iran.

If under the full-press of sanctions and limited, direct action by a coalition, Iran’s leaders would quickly lose its support at home and the political will to protect its nuclear research program. The danger to any US-led coalition against Iran will always remain fumbling either the political policy, the public diplomacy, or the very narrow military action. Such failure to remain focused and persistent on a “smart” policy would only promote a nationalistic support of Iran’s people for its government. All efforts to weaken Iran’s religious leaders must not lose the objective of keeping the interest of the people separate from the attack on the government. Most important of all, the unity of world opinion must remain solid, and that opinion stay in open communication and maintain sympathy with the Iranian people. The world’s hope of a better future for the people in that country becomes the main message.

Sanctions against Iran will have a world-wide impact. That would not necessarily have catastrophic consequences for globalization. Sanctions which include a blockade of Iranian oil would hasten a global reality check. The loss of access to such a major producer would encourage new economies and efficiencies, including the development of alternatives and conservation measures. In a short time anyway, the world will have to confront the truth about an oil-based economy. Sanctions would only hasten the inevitable confrontation with reality.

Any sanctions and enforcement against the government in Tehran should NOT include food and medicine, the latter including foreign medical professionals. Denying those to the Iranian people constitutes inhumane cruelty. The sanctions instead should focus one the most critical feature of Iran’s economy: its petroleum, oil, and lubricants (POL) industry.

Sanctions directed at POL facilities has several benefits. First, it has immediate consequences for transportation within the country: movement, hence the economy, would stop in their tracks. Second, Iran would exhaust its reserves of refined product when it cannot obtain equipment to repair its facilities from the outside world. Iran has a reportedly limited refining capacity. After three or four months of sanctions, its ability to keep even high priority transportation functioning would falter. Iran does not have the capacity to maintain its POL facilities without parts and new equipment from the outside world. Finally, not allowing new equipment into the country, a US-led coalition can severely cripple Iran’s hope for a post-conflict restoration of its place in the world oil trade. Every month without modernization hurts the long-term profits Iran could gleam from its abundant resource. How far can Tehran’s rulers afford to fall behind a competitive Russian oil industry?

The US-led coalition can frame the sanctions in the form of an embargo and blockade of Iran. A blockade might constitute an act of war in the lexicon of international law. The coalition must find some sort of legal qualification for completely isolating Iran. The sanctions require enforcement by military action. Sanctions as conceived here would also include limited forms of military action to make their effect all the more concrete and immediate. International legal justification for sanctions require either a United Nations Security Council resolution or a formal international treaty between the enforcing powers–the countries that form the coalition. Conceivably, only two countries, Russia and China, could obstruct a Security Council resolution with their veto power. Russia would acquiesce in resolution for sanctions and armed enforcement of Iran because Russia would stand to benefit from the loss of Iranian oil on the world market. If Russia could not find the capacity to produce more oil to make up for the gap, then Russia would ultimately earn more hard currency from the increased price of oil. If US and the European Union could not buy Russia’s consent, then at the very least the US and the EU could possibly purchase a Russian abstention in the vote.

China’s consent or abstention would prove more problematic. Its multi-billion oil and gas development contracts with Iran give it an expensive national interest in Iran. China could veto any resolution against Iran, protecting its investment there. The US and its allies should at the least think that it could bribe China. China has only one main interest outside of Taiwan: Finding energy supplies. China may abstain from a veto if the US-led coalition could convince it that in the long-term, solving the dilemma of Iran’s revisionist and radical foreign policy would better serve China’s interest. China cannot project military strength to interfere in an embargo or blockade of Iran. It could interpose even a limited military presence to put their flag at risk. Would China do this? More feasibly, China would use its economic influence to disrupt a sanctions regime. The US and its allies may convince China that short-term pain in reordering the politics of the Persian Gulf will do more to guarantee its free access to energy supplies than supporting the Islamic Revolution. Finally, China may abstain from a veto if it had a worst-case fix for the problem it faces in temporarily losing Iranian oil. The Russians could provide the replacement oil China would need. Balancing these interest requires a deft political game. Does the US have the vision and leadership to do this? If the US cannot solve the problem of a Chinese veto, it may have to face the reality of a radical regime in Tehran armed with nuclear weapons.

The sanctions against Iran envisioned here require a recognition and approval of international law and world opinion. The embargo, or blockade, requires enforcement and perhaps some focused military action aimed at the most vulnerable points of gravity of Iran’s oil industry and transportation system.

The embargo, as stated, would involve the importation and exportation of all petroleum, oil, and lubricant (POL) products, new equipment and spare parts for manufacture and transportation of such products, and the expertise of foreign personnel involved with these matters. Iran, even if it managed to produce gasoline, parts for vehicle repair, new equipment to modernize its POL facilities, has, like all countries, critical choke points for transportation. Refineries have large structures not easily protected from air or special operations forces attacks. Trying to bomb an estimated 70-80 underground, hardened nuclear research facilities would take thousands of planes tens of thousands of sorties, backed by 60,000 troops, and hundreds of naval combat and supply ships. On the other hand, selective attacksu using far less personnel, material, and dollars against the POL infrastructure would tip the point of Iran’s economy into disaster. The attrition of gasoline refining operations and the transportation network, let alone under a limited-scale military attack, would consume Iran on an ever swirling whirlpool into the abyss of economic collapse. Eventually, Iran’s government would have to submit to any coalition demands made upon Tehran, or suffer the alternative of social collapse and the upheaval of the Islamic Revolution. Furthermore, selective attacks against key nodes of the transportation network, their centers of gravity, would leave most of the POL industrial structure free from destruction, excepting only if the Iranians themselves sabotaged their own future if forced to submit. In that latter case, it becomes a question of whether Iran’s population would let fanatic leaders destroy any prospects for a better future.

The plan suggested here has a successful record in history. In World War II, the western Allies of Great Britain and the United States conducted a strategic bombing campaign against Germany. The British bombed the population by night to try and deprive Germany’s people of the political will to continue the war. The United States bombed Germany’s armaments factories by day using “precision” targeting. The population bombing failed. It only created a more steadfast nationalist support for the Nazi regime. The bombing of factories could never find a critical node or center of gravity that would hurt the German military. In fact, after the full-scale commitment to the US campaign in the winter of 1942-43, Germany produced more armaments as the war went to its close, peaking in late-1944, an impressive feat for a German wartime economy under continuous attack. Even worse, the Allies suffered horrendous losses of planes and airmen.

Faced by the failure of a strategy to use an effective weapon like their fleets of bombers, in the last 15 months of World War II the western Allies focused on the POL industry in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe. The results came in the form of Germany’s catastrophic lack of mobility until the end of the war. While Germany produced thousands of aircraft, it could not fly them for lack of fuel. This opened Germany to more bombing. The few fighter aircraft it sent to intercept Allied air forces fell to overwhelming numbers of Allied fighter escorts. On the ground, Germany could not regroup its vaunted panzer formations. The German army could not launch sustained counterattacks. The Ardennes counter-offensive in December 1944-January 1945 failed for the most part because of a lack of fuel for its motorized forces. Germany could not use its interior lines of communications to shift forces back and forth to threatened areas between three fronts (a fourth front in the air). Germany could only rely on railroad and animal transportation. More than any other single campaign of the war, the western Allies hurt Germany’s strategic flexibility by shutting off the gas.

Having the courage to cut off Iran’s gas also limits Iran’s military options after a short time. Iran would lose the ability to mount any serious conventional response to a coalition embargo and blockade. After initial attacks against refining capacity and strategic gasoline reserves, Iran would have trouble keeping necessary and emergency transportation functioning just to move things like food. Any form of military response involving the mass motorized movement of troops and supplies, maneuver of armor and mechanized forces, and flying a peak number of air sorties, could no longer form a viable strategy in Iran’s response. It could not interfere on a large enough scale for a long enough period of time in Iraq or Afghanistan to upset the coalition efforts permanently. Iran would also find its navy, built with Russian-made ships and smaller craft at great cost, unable to sortie over the long-term. Iran could not mount a sustained naval counter-offensive. Even if it chose to use the expensive ships and submarines, they pale in capability ship-for-ship to what a US-led coalition naval force could oppose to them.

Asysemtric attacks against the US and its allies pose the greatest threats to the political resolve behind an embargo and blockade. During the 1980s war with Iraq, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran conducted a guerrilla war against oil tankers entering the Persian Gulf. The Guards used speedboats and other small craft to attack shipping and mine sea lines of communication. Once the United States Navy intervened, Iran’s speedboat offensive ended in a blazing defeat for Tehran’s navy. At all cost, the sanctions coalition must not allow Iran to mine shipping lanes or disrupt marine traffic in the Persian Gulf via the Straights of Hormuz. The US Navy alone, given the authority, could prevent such threats against world oil shipping. The naval element also plays another role besides enforcing the closure of Iran’s ports and terminals in a blockade. If authorized by the eventual legal authority, naval forces could intercept, impound, or disable Iranian shipping anywhere in the world. Losing assets vital for its economic future, such as supertankers, would multiply the difficulty for Iran’s decision to resist the political will of the coalition.

In forming such a coalition of allies, establishing the international legal framework necessary, and agreeing to the political tradeoffs and economic incentives for sanctions against Iran, some sort of post-war vision becomes an absolute. Securing the consent of such countries asChina, and Russia, requires the Kremlin and Beijing to believe that the long-term future provided by the sustained campaign against Iran works best in each countries self-interest. Confronting Iran only works if all parties, even the ones in the Middle East, believe the future worth creating justifies the sacrifices in the present and short-term. The US-led coalition in Iraq learned a hard lesson post-Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 by not having an after-war plan. Since an effort against Iran contains numerous risk, including a risk such as Iran secretly owning and then using a thermo-nuclear device, the long-term vision for a post-confrontation world must honor the idea of “grand strategy.” The plan must have a scope and vision large enough and realistic enough to appeal to most of governments of the world, and appeal to their populations.

The greatest problem in any unstable region revolves around fear: fear caused by distrust; fear of loss; and fear of death. The Persian Gulfs sits in the geographic center of a crescent of vulnerable, unstable societies surrounding the greater-Indian Ocean Basin. What hurts the secure feeling of so many of the countries in that zone stems from not recognizing a mutually shared self-interest in peace and prosperity.

The Indian Ocean Basin lacks the confidence building institutions enjoyed by every other major region in the world. An Arab League of 22 nations exists but disenfranchises the majority of nations in the area affected by instability. On the fringes of the Indian Ocean Basin, Europe has the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Africa has its African Union (AU). On the eastern fringe stands the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN). On the other side of the globe, the Western Hemisphere has the North American Free Trade Zone (NAFTA), the Central America FTA (CAFTA), Mercusor, and the Organization of American States (OAS). No comparable multi-functional, multi-lateral organization exists for the one-quarter of the globe the most at risk for backwards economic development, poverty, political terrorism, narcotics-based organized crime, and inter-state war: The nations in and surrounding the Indian Ocean. While the World Trade Organization (WTO) has global reach, it more or less forms a club of qualified members. It excludes those who most need help in cooperating to create peace and prosperity. In short, the nations of the Indian Ocean Basin need a framework for security cooperation and joint economic development, both to break down the barrier created by fear and distrust and build the connections of mutual benefit.

Such a multi-national attempt to communicate with and learn about each other might begin with an Indian Ocean Area Security and Cooperation Conference. Just the act of meeting, talking frankly and listening open-mindedly might promote peaceful understanding and sense of shared responsibility for security and development. Regardless of political status, all nations affected by the instability of the area should receive an invitation. The nations of northern, eastern, and southern Africa, southwest, central, sub-continental, and southeast Asia (including both Israel and Palestinian representatives) need to have invitations extended to them. An agreement to meet and communicate may suffice as the only requirement for a seat at the conference table. If countries exclude themselves, they lose out. Enough Arab countries would find the opportunity as a whole so enticing that they would attend in spite of Israel, leaving the holdouts behind the march of history. Israel would attend solely for the opportunity for recognition as an equal in the forum, achieving a long-sought diplomatic goal.

The permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Japan should also receive invitations. The interests of these six nations depend on the stability of the oil-producing Indian Ocean Basin. The powers could attend as observers or even assume the role of guarantors of the desired multi-national agreements.

A system of annual conferences for heads of government and important ministers could take place. The conference could even go so far as to establish a rotating three month presidency to deal of a permanent conference of representatives sitting in continuous session in a different city in the region every year. So, this format begs a question: What about the United Nations? To answer simply, the UN involves far too broad of a social, cultural, economic, and political mission across the globe. An Indians Ocean Area Security and Cooperation Conference would have more focus at the lower level of intra-regional affairs. It could devote more attention and resources on purely local problems where UN mission objectives must balance world-wide.

The founding principle of a conference such as this should have one goal more than anything else: a freely-entered treaty among on participants recognizing the sovereignty and borders of the signatories. Ideally, such a collective defense “one invaded, all invaded” provision like that found in the North Atlantic Treaty would go far to removing the fear and distrust epidemic to the nations of the region.

Talking instead of fighting, negotiating, even as a form of delay, provides time to resolve conflict peacefully. In a region living in an eventual post-Iraq occupation and post-Iranian sanctions phase, a better future, one worth the time, energy, blood, sweat and tears needed to create it, might provide the best hope for removing causes of deadly conflict from the region of the world most at risk from it. Beyond the security, the countries of the Indian Ocean Basin have a mutual self-interest in connecting to the 21^st century economy. A permanent framework of joint economic development such as the conference would boost the rate at which the countries in the Basin move forward. Facing a youth demographic explosion and always under the threat of tyranny, the nations of the Indian Ocean Basin would do well to provide the prosperity, opportunity and personal freedom of choices to their potentially rebellious populations. Freedom and prosperity have universal appeal. Helping nations help themselves in obtaining them together just may tip the balance away from the radicals who use fear, anger, poverty, and oppression to bolster their movements appeal. We have a future worth creating. It begins by confronting Iran. It ends by doing service to human dignity and creating hope to fight ignorance and apathy.

Essay

Resolutions on the Iraq War:

Don’t Repeat the Syndrome

Across the country there is a misguided attempt to pass non-binding voter resolutions calling for the withdrawal of United States military forces from Iraq. Those who might consider voting for such resolutions should be warned: TANSTAAFL. That means, “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” Although divided by party and ideological issues, American society suffers a spiritual disease: a profound self-centeredness that insists we each are absolutely right and deserved to be immediately satisfied for free.

The wars against terrorism and in Iraq are indivisible and cannot be separated one from the other. The conservative right in America believes supporting an incompetent political leadership will lead us to victory in The War. The liberal left seems to think that peace and prosperity come without costs.

Victory in a struggle like The War only comes with the right actions done at the right times. We only gain liberty by fighting for it. We save freedom by defending it. We protect ourselves only by working at it. We do not have a God-given right to control others. Just as simply, we do not have a natural right from the Creator to own and drive a car.

Around 2500 American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Over 20,000 have been wounded, with some suffering irreparable harm. The United States service men and women risks their lives while we in America can live in comfort and safety never, ever seen before since the dawn of humanity.

Every casualty in war is tragic. Over 4,000 Americans were killed in a single morning and afternoon in September 1862 at the Battle of Antietam (a.k.a. Sharpsburg). Seven-thousand American sailors and marines were killed over five weeks in the winter of 1945 during the battle of Iwo Jima. Twice that number of American troops died over the spring of that year fighting on Okinawa. In 8 weeks of fighting in December 1944 and January 1945, 22,000 Americans were killed in the Battle of the Bulge. In all of these mentioned battles combined, a few hundred thousand troops were wounded. Think of the scale of the sacrifice of those men protecting the lives and liberty of their families back home! Never would we dare dishonor them by saying we did not value their heroism and loss.

What do we say about the memory of 3,000 innocent people who were murdered in four short hours one early morning in September 2001? On 9/11/01 Americans finally became aware of a long-established fact: we had been at war with Islamist fanatics for almost 20 years. A few individuals disconnected from the world were using an extreme heresy about their religion to justify killing Americans. Regardless of the unending controversy about Saddam Hussein’s ties to terrorists and his weapons of mass destruction, we could no longer avoid dealing with societies stuck in poverty, ignorance, and oppression. The war in Iraq was an inevitable extension of the war against the terrorists. Even had America not launched an invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States would still be militarily engaged in the Middle East either presently or shortly in the future. The death or assassination of Saddam Hussein, the rearming of Iraq after the end of ineffective sanctions, including with weapons of mass destruction, would have led to intervention. A struggle involving Iran’s nuclear research or a jihadi revolution in Saudi Arabia were all, and still are, possibilities in The War. Invading Iraq at the very least allowed the United States and our allies to choose our battlefield.

The post-invasion insurgency, the occupation and the reconstruction of Iraq have all been criminally mismanaged by the Bush Administration. The problem was not invading in the first place, and is not having troops there now. The problem is not having sent enough troops in the first place after the invasion. After three years of death and destruction, the Administration has finally tilted the balance in Iraq. The Iraqis themselves are on the threshold of governing themselves. The civil war has been a reality since the bombing in Baghdad of the United Nations headquarters in August 2004. At that time, the insurgents began intentionally targeting civilians. Three years after the invasion, the withdrawal of American troops would deprive Iraq of the vital glue it needs to create a self-governing nation. Withdrawal of United States military forces now would snatch a prosperous and peaceful future away from the Iraqi people.

The Vietnam legacy is instructive. When the America military lost public support for the war in Vietnam, morale in the armed forces disintegrated. That was a major cause of what became a quagmire. America withdrew its troops in 1973 with a stalemate. South Vietnam was, while corrupt, still free of communist domination. In one of the most unjustified moral crimes in the history of our nation, Congress abandoned the Vietnamese people by refusing to support Presidents Nixon’s and Ford’s attempts to enforce the peace. As a direct result of a stab-in-the-back to those Americans and allies who fought in that war, literally millions and millions of Cambodians, Laotians, and Vietnamese were imprisoned, tortured, starved, and murdered because America abandoned its friends.

While the fall of South Vietnam did not alter the geo-political calculus of the Cold War, giving Iraq to the terrorists would condemn several million people in Iraq and the surrounding countries. Beside genocide, civil war, famine, dismemberment and tyranny in Iraq, the entire Middle East would become a victim of instability and conflict. All of Iraq’s neighbors, and Europe, India, China, and Japan would be involved in a violent Great Power struggle for domination of that part of the globe. Iraq is a key piece of the puzzle of the world economy because of it sits on Persian Gulf oil. We cannot ignore political realities.

In Iraq, America has a central position to provide the security needed for the modernization of Muslim civilization. Without security, the Muslim world will remain impoverished and disconnected from the world. Besides fatally wounding the world’s prosperity, American withdrawal from Iraq would not end our problems. We would be on the road of retreat from that region. We could no longer choose the battlefield. The terrorist and foes of peace would have “the Base” they need to operate freely against us. The “new” dictators of 1/3 of the world’s population would not end at the expulsion of the West and East Asia from the Muslim empire. They would advance from their sanctuary with our total destruction as their final objective.

If America says to our troops, “you don’t deserve our support,” could we remain a free country? That is improbable. We would have to become a police state and militarized society to fight The War closer to home. Passing resolutions to withdraw from Iraq may not have immediate effects. But in the five or ten years following, disgracing our troops or abandoning Iraq could set in motion a preventable catastrophe for the long-term future of freedom and liberty around the world.

Review

A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005.

A Great Improvisation by Stacy Schiff is another stellar biography based on a Founding Father. Many such bio-histories have appeared in the last several years. Among these are books written by presidential historian Joseph Ellis, economic historian Ron Chernow, and the modern master of the American history narrative, David McCollough. Schiff’s book on Benjamin Franklin’s mission to France during the Revolutionary War recounts in a reader-friendly prose the remarkable diplomatic revolution within the larger revolution perpetrated by Franklin.

When he arrived in France in late 1776, Franklin was already considered the proto-typical self-made New American. He was certainly the most famous American in the world. A runaway son of a impoverished Boston candle-maker, Franklin had earned fame and a considerable fortune as a self-taught publisher and publicist in Philadelphia in the Pennsylvania colony. As a man of true science, he made the decisive breakthrough in the ether-world of electro-magnetic physics by demonstrating the polar and mechanical properties of electricity. He had served as the colonial agent at the Court of St. James, where he suffered a public humiliation by the king’s ministers before the outbreak of hostilities between England and her North American colonies. Franklin had also been instrumental in the writing and ratification of the Declaration of Independence several months before his embassy to France and he treated defiantly with King George III’s peace commissioners that summer of 1776. In the meantime he had presided over the convention that designed Pennsylvania’s new state constitution, a document he most likely drafted which was the most radical democratic constitution ever devised to that time.

Franklin’s reputation from these accomplishments and his philosopher status for the homespun wisdom in Poor Richard’s Almanac gave him notoriety and credibility. It was rightly believed by the Continental Congress that Franklin would be kindly and openly received by aristocratic French society glorying in the 18^th Century Enlightenment of progress and science. Franklin’s shrewd perception of political realities made him a formidable representative to Old Europe’s kings and ministers.

Franklin’s goal was as daunting as it was simply stated: Secure a declaration of war by the King of France against the King of England. Franklin’s interlocutor was the wily foreign minister of King Louis XVI, the Comte de Vergennes. Enemies since the dawn of the second millennium, France and England engaged in frequent and expensive wars to dominate the politics of Continental Europe. The most recent conflict, The Seven Year’s War of 1756 to 1763 (called the French and Indian War by the Americans) was fought on the northern plains of Europe, the forest of North America, the jungles of Africa and India, and on every sea and ocean between them. France had lost control of Canada as a result of the war. It was in scheming to redeem both power and honor that France looked for opportunities to humble Great Britain. France’s ultimate goal was to tip the balance of power in Europe back to their favor.

Vergennes saw clearly that French raison d’etat (reasons of state) favored American independence: It would weaken the British Empire. Through the incompetent and corrupt Silas Deane, the Congress’s first agent to France, and later directly through Franklin, Vergennes arranged for French articles of war, gold and credit to be sent to the newly independent United States and the Continental Army. Everything from tents to gunpowder, from shoes to cannon, was secretly shipped to America under the eyes of British spies and the protest of the British government. French assistance, although always barely enough, took place within the ever present and implied “plausible deniability” of later ages. It was only through overtly covert means that France dared to support the new American states. Thus far in the war, the Continental Army under the noble George Washington had suffered near-catastrophic defeats. Whether there would be an America with which to be allies always left Vergennes just holding away from the total commitment of France’s army and that navy in the war. Only that measure of support could ensure a decisive American victory in the Revolutionary War.

Stymied by America not having a disciplined, trained army, mostly made up of unreliable militia, Franklin used his charm and his judgement to never ask to much in order to keep the arms and money pipeline flowing. Franklin also used his gift of oratory to keep Vergennes and King Louis XVI listening.

In the winter of 1777-78 the hoped for event finally happened. An entire British army invading New York from Canada was surrounded and captured in the Battles Around Saratoga. It was not Washington’s victory, but that of the unscrupulous Major General Horatio Gates, who himself stole the credit for victory which belonged to then-patriot-hero-later-traitor, Benedict Arnold.

Armed with the news, Franklin in his cunning and skill secured in February of that winter the most one-sided wartime alliance America has ever had. Two treaties were signed. One was a full military alliance which brought the mighty power of France into open conflict with Great Britain. The main victory within the treaty was the provision that France would only make peace with the consent of Congress. The other treaty was commercial and opened to American shipping and merchants all the French territories upon favorable terms.

Three and a half years later, it was with a French army under his command and as the result of a fortuitous French naval victory that Lt. General Washington won the decisive battle of Yorktown. England called the war in America to a halt and asked for terms as she was heavy in debt and her commerce was ruined by American and French privateers. America had won her independence thanks to the generous King of France.

While war between Great Britain and France continued, with the latter having been joined by Spain and the Netherlands (though these two nations were not directly allied with America), the terms of peace were negotiated. Franklin served on the American commission along with the future president, John Adams. The balance of power had shifted indeed. But it did not move in favor of France as much as America assumed through time the role of counterweight to the ambitions of Old Europe and her rulers.

Suffering defeats in 1782, France became willing to agree to terms with Great Britain on issues detrimental to American interests. Then, Franklin and the American peace commissioners displayed a true appreciation of old world raison d’etat and made peace on separate terms from France, in violation of the 1778 treaty of alliance.

It was, ironically, his support of revolution in America that eventually led King Louis XVI to lose his own head during France’s own, more violent revolution a decade later. The King of France in fighting for America created a debt which he could not repay. Louis was forced to call an assembly of nobles, clergy, and the middle class in order to raise the new taxes that were needed. That was the beginning of France’s revolution and the undoing of Old Europe In the process of 25 years of turmoil, Europe exchanged familiar oppressions for new forms of tyranny.

Franklin’s achievements in the service of his country were immeasurable in the grand scheme. He returned home to Philadelphia in 1785, served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and died at age 84 in 1790. In death he suffered the abuse of enemies who spoke of his arrogance, perfidy, and democratic demagoguery.

There was one event during his time in Paris which served as the crossing point of an intellectual age. Franklin was one half of the participants in one of the most famous interviews of the century. In 1778 he had an audience with the voice of reason and the master of skepticism toward all forms of ignorance and apathy. Voltaire himself had returned from exile to die in Paris. Fashionable and commonplace Paris were thrilled by the idea that the defender of progress in a time of oppression passed his blessing to the New American Man. The meeting of Franklin and Voltaire may have signified that more than the role of world power was shifting across the Atlantic. The torch of liberty had passed from Old World thinkers to the New World, from the world that didn’t understand liberty to those New Men and Women who lived and fought for freedom.