I sometimes feel like “bomb Iran” is just a policy proposal walking around in search of a solution. Mostly, it’s supposed to solve something related to their nuclear program but nobody can ever quite say what. Sometimes, it’s for something to do with their “meddling” in Iraq. Here via Tyler Cowen we see Shmuel Rosner confront the fact that bombing Iran isn’t a good way of preventing them from getting nuclear weapons, and come around to favoring bombing Iran anyway:

According to this line of thinking, which has adherents…focusing on the tactical questions surrounding such an operation — how much of Iran’s nuclear program can Israel destroy? how many years can a bombing campaign set the program back? — is a mistake. The main goal of a hit would not be to destroy the program completely, but rather to awaken the international community from its slumber and force it to finally engineer a solution to the crisis…any attack on Iran’s reactors — as long as it is not perceived as a military failure — can serve as a means of “stirring the pot” of international geopolitics. Israel, in other words, wouldn’t be resorting to military action because it is convinced that diplomacy by the international community cannot stop Iran; it would be resorting to military action because only diplomacy by the international community can stop Iran.

This, honestly, would be downright silly if not for the fact that bombing countries is per se a serious business. One likes to think that Israel hasn’t managed to survive this long in a dangerous neighborhood by being run by morons and, thus, this policy is going to be rejected. Meanwhile, as one can see here, what’s needed here are fewer rumors of war and more direct engagement by the United States in a serious diplomatic effort at a rapprochement with Iran. Israel’s soi disant friends in the United States seem to get antsy at the prospect of anything resembling a real diplomatic initiative, but it would clearly be the best thing for Israel as well as for the US, Iran, Iraq and the world at large.

One major problem with bombing Iran as a means of disarming them, is that even if we bomb Iran this won’t prevent them from building a nuclear weapon. But it seems John Bolton has answered this objection:

If successful, such highly risky and deeply unattractive air strikes or sabotage will not resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis. But they have the potential to buy considerable time, thereby putting that critical asset back on our side of the ledger rather than on Iran’s.

With whatever time is bought, we may be able to effect regime change in Tehran, or at least get the process underway.

Justin Logan points out some of the serious problems with this strategy but it’s worth also noting that it’s really hard to say whether or not bombing Iran would really delay anything at all. You can think of the timeline as driven by a few different variables. Destroying some equipment and infrastructure and killing some people would definitely be a setback for the program. But an American bombing raid might lead the Iranian government to boost funding for the program. It might lead the Iranian government to restart work on weaponization. It might lead foreign countries to look more sympathetically on the Iranian predicament and become less helpful to efforts to prevent Iran from getting a nuke. For all we know, airstrikes could make the Iranians get a nuclear weapon sooner by making us look like an irrational actor that needs to be balanced against.

Now maybe not, maybe it really would produce a delay and maybe that delay could somehow be used to locate the regime change pony and maybe the new regime in Iran would have no interest in nuclear weapons, but that’s an awfully long string of “maybes” to use as a pretext for starting a war.

One problem in US foreign policy is that we tend to focus our resources on addressing various kinds of crises — security, humanitarian, etc. — while letting our eye wander from festering problems that might tip over into crisis situation. This even thought an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Andrew Sweet and Natalie Ondiak have a report out for CAP in the context of foreign assistance programs and looking at five specific cases (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Liberia, Sudan and Ethiopia) “to explore how the off-and-on pattern of aid delivery undercuts our aims and the long-term sustainable security needs of these countries.” Needless to say, recommendations for improvement are offered.

Reviewing Eric Patterson’s Just War Thinking over the weekend, Robert Farley said:

Of course, the reasons for the presumption against war are fairly obvious. War has always been a destructive activity, and has become more so in the modern world. It is hardly pacifist to say that accomplishing a goal through peaceful means is preferable to accomplishing goals through war; as James Fearon notes, war always has ex ante costs. This is not to say that good things can’t be accomplished through war, but accomplishing such things by war will always be more costly than achieving them by negotiation. As such, unless one assigns a positive value to the fighting of war, negotiation will always be the preferred course for a rational actor, until it is clear that these efforts will fail. The only way around this is to assign a positive value to the fighting of war, and this is something that democratic societies don’t do; indeed, Patterson doesn’t bother to make the argument that war, in and of itself, has positive value.

But just because modern democratic societies don’t, usually, attach a positive value to war-fighting as such doesn’t mean that nobody does. As I observed of John McCain and his hero Teddy Roosevelt:

Perhaps most disturbingly of all, McCain appears to be grounded not only in dangerous ideas about international relations but also in an active hostility to prudence. In David Brooks’ 1999 McCain-lauding essay, “Politics and Patriotism: From Teddy Roosevelt to John McCain,” Brooks writes that McCain and others worry “that we have become a nation obsessed with risk avoidance and safety.” The cure? To follow Roosevelt who “saw foreign-policy activism and patriotism as remedies for cultural threats he perceived at home.” De-euphemized, Roosevelt saw war as a positive good; in his years as New York City Police Commissioner he yearned for a now-obscure 1895 border dispute between Venezuela and the British colony of Guiana to turn into a great power conflict. “Let the fight come if it must,” Roosevelt wrote to Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge. “I don’t care whether our sea-coast cities are bombarded or not; we would take Canada … the clamor of the peace faction has convinced me that this country needs a war.” Only three months later Roosevelt mused that “it is very difficult for me not to wish a war with Spain, for such a war would result at once in getting a proper Navy.” The indifference to questions of national strategy here is a bit frightening, but to Brooks’ way of thinking, it’s a small price to pay to combat cultural threats at home.

And here’s Corey Robin reporting on conversations with Irving Kristol and William Buckley in 2000:

“The trouble with the emphasis in conservatism on the market,” Buckley told me, “is that it becomes rather boring. You hear it once, you master the idea. The notion of devoting your life to it is horrifying if only because it’s so repetitious. It’s like sex.” Conservatism, Kristol complained, “is so influenced by business culture and by business modes of thinking that it lacks any political imagination, which has always been, I have to say, a property of the Left.” Kristol confessed to a deep yearning for an American empire: “What’s the point of being the greatest, most powerful nation in the world and not having an imperial role? It’s unheard of in human history. The most powerful nation always had an imperial role.” But, he continued, previous empires were not “capitalist democracies with a strong emphasis on economic growth and economic prosperity.” Because of its commitment to the free market, the United States lacked the fortitude and vision to wield imperial power. “It’s too bad,” Kristol lamented. “I think it would be natural for the United States . . . to play a far more dominant role in world affairs. Not what we’re doing now but to command and to give orders as to what is to be done. People need that. There are many parts of the world—Africa in particular—where an authority willing to use troops can make a very good difference, a healthy difference.” But with public discussion dominated by accountants—”there’s the Republican Party tying itself into knots. Over what? Prescriptions for elderly people? Who gives a damn? I think it’s disgusting that . . . presidential politics of the most important country in the world should revolve around prescriptions for elderly people. Future historians will find this very hard to believe. It’s not Athens. It’s not Rome. It’s not anything.” Kristol thought it unlikely that the United States would take its rightful place as the successor to empires past.

This is, needless to say, a dangerous attitude for people to have. But it seems to have some non-trivial sway on the right.

If you haven’t seen it yet, go read the transcript of Barack Obama talking to Fareed Zakaria about foreign policy. I think Zakaria’s hit the sweet spot right now on the continuum between IR wonk and Tom Friedman where he’s accessible but also making sense and Obama shows that smart people look much better answering smart questions than silly ones. He’s got a sensible appreciation for the realpolitik tradition and also for how international institutions play a vital role in the contemporary world. Plus at one point he sounds like he’s been reading The Prosperity Agenda or, more likely, getting briefed by its authors.

I liked Barack Obama’s summation of the big strategic picture in late 2001, and the massive lost opportunity of the Bush/McCain strategy:

Imagine, for a moment, what we could have done in those days, and months, and years after 9/11.

• We could have deployed the full force of American power to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and all of the terrorists responsible for 9/11, while supporting real security in Afghanistan.
• We could have secured loose nuclear materials around the world, and updated a 20th century non-proliferation framework to meet the challenges of the 21st.
• We could have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in alternative sources of energy to grow our economy, save our planet, and end the tyranny of oil.
• We could have strengthened old alliances, formed new partnerships, and renewed international institutions to advance peace and prosperity.
• We could have called on a new generation to step into the strong currents of history, and to serve their country as troops and teachers, Peace Corps volunteers and police officers.
• We could have secured our homeland—investing in sophisticated new protection for our ports, our trains and our power plants.
• We could have rebuilt our roads and bridges, laid down new rail and broadband and electricity systems, and made college affordable for every American to strengthen our ability to compete.
• We could have done that.

Instead, we have lost thousands of American lives, spent nearly a trillion dollars, alienated allies and neglected emerging threats – all in the cause of fighting a war for well over five years in a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

Looking forward, Obama outlines five goals for our post-Iraq foreign policy: “I will focus this strategy on five goals essential to making America safer: ending the war in Iraq responsibly; finishing the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban; securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue states; achieving true energy security; and rebuilding our alliances to meet the challenges of the 21st century.”

No speech yet, but I do have speech excerpts. I liked this one:

Our men and women in uniform have accomplished every mission we have given them. What’s missing in our debate about Iraq – what has been missing since before the war began – is a discussion of the strategic consequences of Iraq and its dominance of our foreign policy. This war distracts us from every threat that we face and so many opportunities we could seize. This war diminishes our security, our standing in the world, our military, our economy, and the resources that we need to confront the challenges of the 21st century. By any measure, our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe.

In short, Barack Obama wants you to attend the Iraq in Strategic Context panel on Thursday at 1:30 PM at Netroots Nation. It features your humble blogger, Spencer Ackerman, Ilan Goldenberg, and Alex Rossmiller.

It seems the hugely expensive DDG-1000/DD(X)/Zumwalt class destroyer is going to have its procurement halted at 2. You can see Robert Farley and the Danger Room for more on this, but I think it’s a smart decision. The ship is an impressive weapons platform in search of a serious rationale at a time when the focus of the Navy’s procurement budget needs to be on acquiring a sufficient number of ships to execute its core mission. It’s only a shame that so much money has been sunk into this project already, money that could have been spent on more practical endeavors.

Via a livid Robert Farley, Michael O’Hanlon is livid:

Michael E. O’Hanlon, a Democratic defense analyst at the Brookings Institution who has been an outspoken supporter of the war in Iraq, said he could not believe that Obama would put such a definitive timeline into print before a trip to Iraq, where he is to consult with Iraqi leaders and U.S. commanders.

“To say you’re going to get out on a certain schedule — regardless of what the Iraqis do, regardless of what our enemies do, regardless of what is happening on the ground — is the height of absurdity,” said O’Hanlon, who described himself as “livid.” “I’m not going to go to the next level of invective and say he shouldn’t be president. I’ll leave that to someone else.”

The good news is I think we can say for sure that O’Hanlon won’t be getting any jobs in the Obama administration. The bad news is, well, I dunno what it is. You can see the Armchair Generalist for more on the specific points.

I’ll just note that any time a politician offers a medium-term plan — 16 month withdrawal timeline, treaty to reduce global carbon emissions, health care reform, whatever — you can make it sound absurd by saying it would be crazy to stick with the plan under absolutely any circumstances. Maybe a race of alien lizards will land in Mosul and commence their program of world conquest, in which case it would be odd to stick with the 16 month withdrawal timeline and I assume John McCain would revisit his plan to kick Russia out of the G-8 in the interests of human solidarity. But under a range of realistically likely sets of “facts on the ground” a timeline for a phased withdrawal of forces from Iraq would improve the strategic context in which we’re operating and free up resources for use on other problems.

WaPo/ABC takes a poll:

Obama has proposed a timetable to withdraw most U.S. forces from Iraq within 16 months of his taking office. McCain has opposed a specific timetable and said events should dictate when troops are withdrawn. Which approach do you prefer – a timetable or no timetable?

Opinion on that question comes out 50-49 which goes to show mostly that it’ll be deadly for progressives to let that kind of framing stand. The implication here is that McCain is hewing to some kind of agnostic middle ground about troop departures, letting the schedule be dictated by events. In fact, what McCain is hewing to is the goal of a permanent military presence in Iraq, and thus a military and political strategy in Iraq geared toward making a permanent presence possible. Given that such a presence is broadly unpopular in Iraq, and also a specific source of inter-factional tension and also a large incentive for Iran to play a destructive rather than constructive role in Iraq, it’s a strategic objective that makes stability and substantial troop withdrawals essentially impossible for the foreseeable future.

The idea of a 16 month timetable sounds a bit arbitrary because it is a bit arbitrary — why not 15 months or 17 months? But a certain level of arbitrariness is inherent in the idea of setting a fixed schedule. And a fixed schedule for withdrawal is the only context in which it’s possible for US forces to accomplish something constructive during the remaining time, will let us reallocate resources away from this wasteful war, and with some luck will actually reduce the level of internal tensions in Iraq. There’s no choice between setting a timetable and taking a “wait and see” attitude, there’s a choice between putting down a marker (in the real world, more likely negotiated with the Iraqi government than inside a presidential campaign staff) of where the exits lie, and a costly and pointless open-ended engagement.