“While the August 18 NYT article added new details about the extent of US military collaboration with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during Iraq’s 1980-88 war with Iran, it omitted the most outrageous aspect of the scandal: not only did Ronald Reagan’s Washington turn a blind-eye to the Hussein regime’s repeated use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and Iraq’s Kurdish minority, but the US helped Iraq develop its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.”
Sigh. That article proves nothing.
US aid to Iraq mainly came in the form of very generous loans. The US also sold them some choppers that were pretty easily converted to military use (as the article points out).
The US did not provide Iraq with a chemical weapons program, except insofar as we gave them money and looked the other way regarding what they did with it. Neither did the US provide them with a nuclear or biological weapons program. As I said, the brunt of the Iraqi chem weapons program was provided by Germany. Their nuclear program (such as it was, specifically the Ossirak reactor) was provided by the French. Most of their conventional military hardware was Russian.
This isn’t to absolve the US in its responsibility for enabling Saddam. But sayin “The US gave/sold Iraq chemical/biological/nuclear weapons” is simply false; there is no argument otherwise.
The US also escorted Iraqi oil tankers (well, tankers with Iraqi oil), as I recall, and launched a number of attacks on Iranian forces and installations with that as pretext.
The Shia will obtain nuclear weapons, it’s inevitable.
Once they do the Sunni countries will have to as well, and it will end up with an Israeli-Shia-Sunni stand off. Two of the protagonists are already engaged in covert warfare in Iraq, the Iranians run the Shi’ite and most of the Sunni control and funding is straight from the Saudi’s.
At best we can hope for the US to hold it’s own version of the Sword of Damocles over the entire region, and whoever fires first guarantees themselves obliteration.
That’s exactly what I was trying to say. There’s more to winning a war than devastation. You have to make sure that the result would not be worse than what you went to war for in the first place.
Rambo trained the Taliban, though.
Does everyone trust what Isreal have to say about Iran? Are we dead cert on the intel this time?
Reading and posting in P&R is the same thing as stalking? I guess now I’m the moral equivalent of a stalker AND a racist.
We could send heavy cav and artillery into Iran, utterly demolish anything that might possibly be related to nuclear research, and leave again.
We wouldn’t ever have to set foot in the country (though Iraq-based SOF units most certainly would) in order to seriously maul Iran’s nuclear program. While it’s true we don’t have every significant site located, we have many dozens of them. Start with the Bushehr reactor, which is the engine room of the whole weaponization process.
Iran’s not the only nation that’s going to be pissed. You have to take into account that the diplomatic fallout is going to be felt all around the world. No one likes naked displays of aggression.
The choice between yet more of the “Muslim street’s” ire and a nuclear-armed Iran is no choice at all. As for “naked displays of aggression,” one has to apply the label to the Iranian government’s public call for “wiping” the “cancer” of Israel “off the map” whilst developing the nuclear weapons to do it.
It’s the reality of this century that the pace of nuclear proliferation is going to increase as technology moves on.
Only if we let it. Nuclear-weapons technology has been widely understood internationally since at least the early 1960s. Proliferation only really gained speed in the Nineties with the ambivalence of the post-Cold War West. It’s time for that ambivalence to end.
MAD worked on the Soviets and it’s going to have to keep working in the future.
MAD works in a zero-sum international environment composed of exactly two players. Alas, your hypothetical Proliferation Era is not a two-man chess match, but more like nine-handed No-Limit Hold 'Em — there are many more players available to make miscalculations (not to mention the lethal results of just one unstable actor).
The UK, France, China, South Africa, and Israel all had nuclear weapons during the cold war; France wasn’t exactly our friend for lots of the cold war; and China and the USSR nearly fought a war in the 1969. Not sure what you mean.
The Muslim street is not the issue here, atleast not significantly so. The US doesn’t have much goodwill left after the fuckup that is Iraq, the diplomatic fallout will hit you in the UN, in the European Union, in China and in Russia. That is in addition to eroding what is left of your credibility with the “Muslim street” whose goodwill you might need when you decide to interfere in the region the next time.
All this has a cost, in dollars over trade agreements, in efforts and resources when you ask for help to fight terrorism, in less favourable deals when you negotiatie with foreign countries, etc, etc.
Then, like Valve placing ads in video games, we should simply sit back and suck it up.
I’m not very comfortable with that. As the list of nuclear nations grows, the likelihood that all of them will keep tabs on their nukes drops considerably.
I think we should have attacked India and Pakistan when they adopted nukes. Weakness there has invited repetition.
No doubt I’m crazy, etc. etc. But if we give in here, non-proliferation is dead.
Nonsense, I think you are willfully ignoring the progressive march onward of technology. The theory behind a nuclear weapon has been available to scientists worldwide for years, yes, but the actual physical processes involved in enriching nuclear material up to weapons grade and in assembling a warhead were long beyond the know how of nations without serious R&D budgets and high tech infrastructure. As time passes the high tech infrastructure gets more widespread and refinements to the processes make it easier and cheaper for countries to embark on nuclear programs.
Just as an example, I recall reading recently that the gas centrifuges in use today are way more efficient than the older types that the U.S. originally used way back in the 40’s and 50’s to start building the nuclear stockpile. So modern nuclear programs from places like Pakistan or Iran are requiring a lot less resources than the U.S. spent on this stuff originally. As technology progresses, the cost of these programs will only continue to decrease until the earth will be carpeted with nuclear capable nations.
The problem is that we can’t police the world. We can’t just tell every other nation on earth that we will attack them mercilessly if they try to get nukes. That will just cause bigger problems than a limited nuclear exchange would.
I think treaties and a U.N. (or some other international agency) role in monitoring nuclear stockpiles is the only way to go. I also think that armed intervention to sieze/protect nuclear stockpiles does become justified if a local government cant meet standards or a civil war breaks out or other turmoil occurs that would throw the ability of a goverment to secure their stockpile into doubt. But I don’t think we can just pre-emptively tell nations “no nukes”, not when they see the benefits and respect a nuclear powers gets and craves that for themselves.
What do you call it when a country sits on a huge pile of nukes and then tells other, non-hostile countries that they can’t have them, too? Hypocritical neo-imperialism?
Not only that, but if we start attacking every country that’s trying to obtain nukes we become some crazy rogue nation.
What happens to oil production if we bomb Iran?
Interesting summit on the news yesterday of business and intel leaders trying to point out the fact that dependance on foreign oil is a much greater natl. sec. problem than terrorism or anything else.
A 4% dropoff in production can send the worlds economy into a tailspin…
we bomb Iran and opec will shut us off.
turn your SUV into a sandbox.
I think this is just wishful thinking. The Soviets were interested in survival. I am not sure Iran, their leadership I mean, is.
(Intervention) has a cost, in dollars over trade agreements, in efforts and resources when you ask for help to fight terrorism, in less favourable deals when you negotiate with foreign countries, etc, etc.
Yet, ironically, the international community is not willing to sanction Iran, which conducts global terrorism, pisses on the NPT, and vows the obliteration of a sovereign neighbor. Such is the state of things.
As time passes the high tech infrastructure gets more widespread and refinements to the processes make it easier and cheaper for countries to embark on nuclear programs.
But the process can be arrested by international military action, and at the very least deterred by robust economic sanction. My question: Why will the international community not resort to even the sanctions, let alone military action? Why is the world so sanguine about nuclear proliferation?
The bottom line is that we can bomb reactors, choke off technical programs with embargoes, and squeeze governments with economic sanction. We can do all of these things to prevent nuclear-weapon programs from coming online, yet we refuse.
We can’t just tell every other nation on earth that we will attack them mercilessly if they try to get nukes. That will just cause bigger problems than a limited nuclear exchange would.
Madness.
By the way, a limited nuclear exchange across the Persian Gulf is likely the end of oil export in the region, and thus the industrialized way of life.
But I don’t think we can just pre-emptively tell nations “no nukes”, not when they see the benefits and respect a nuclear powers gets and craves that for themselves.
Alas – the problem in a nutshell, that there are only benefits and no costs because no one in the international community will make it costly. If the costs outweigh the benefits, the action will not be undertaken. If the cost is armed attack by a determined United Nations, it will be very tough indeed for most rational actors to undertake a nuclear-weapons program.
What do you call it when a country sits on a huge pile of nukes and then tells other, non-hostile countries that they can’t have them, too? Hypocritical neo-imperialism?
Always a good laugh to see the moral equivalization of the West with countries like Iran and North Korea. Ask an Israeli if the Iranian government is “non-hostile.” They are busy digging fallout shelters, but on their next break they will be glad to laugh at you.
we bomb Iran and opec will shut us off.
No way. After Israel, the nation that benefits the most from a chastened Iran is Saudi Arabia. There will be public bluster (though not much – the Saudis are already embroiled in a low-level proxy war against the Iranians in Iraq) but at the end of the day the regional oil powers will be our biggest supporters in this strike.
Iran can inflict economic damage through its own oil embargo, but the primary sufferer would be China.
The UK, France, China, South Africa, and Israel all had nuclear weapons during the cold war; France wasn’t exactly our friend for lots of the cold war; and China and the USSR nearly fought a war in the 1969. Not sure what you mean.
The nuclear nations involved in the Cold War operated exclusively within the US-USSR framework. Those on the periphery, i.e. Israel, never faced nuclear enemies. China is actually a perfect MAD case study – at various times, China faced the prospect of American nuclear attack (over Korea and Vietnam) and Soviet nuclear attack (over their border disputes). You’ll note that neither the US nor USSR could attack China, due to the reaction it would have triggered from the opposite superpower.
Now imagine a Middle East in which Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and conceivably even Bahrain have developed a nuclear “deterrent.” There is no regional superpower, not even Israel, and the Saudis are at least as afraid of Iran as the Israelis. There is no MAD balance – only nuclear-armed regional agitators, not to mention their various security lapses and terrorist proxies.
You think nations aren’t interested in survival and you accuse me of wishful thinking?
Pretty much everyone is interested in survival. Individual exceptions exist for people who have drank the kool aid of some fanatical dogma or another but on the whole people do not make blatantly self destructive moves. Especially when considering goverments which tend to be made up of amibitous people keen for power.