Iran Should Get the Bomb?

Here’s an argument about Iran’s nuclear enrichment program that you might not have heard yet:  “Most U.S., European, and Israeli commentators and policymakers warn that a nuclear-armed Iran would be the worst possible outcome of the current standoff.  In fact, it would probably be the best possible result: the one most likely to restore stability to the Middle East.”  It’s presented in an article by the international relations theorist Kenneth Waltz in the July/August issue of “Foreign Affairs,” and his general purpose is to respond to the alarmist rhetoric surrounding Iran’s nuclear program and encourage more rational thinking about the issue.  It’s nice to read an article that examines the issue from a different perspective, but in responding to the radical voices calling for military strikes on Iran, Waltz stakes out an equally radical position on the opposite side of the debate and thus ends up sounding just as reckless and irrational as the commentators and policymakers whose minds he’d like to change.     

Waltz supports his argument mostly by providing examples of nuclear-armed rival states that have provided stability by balancing each other, focusing heavily on how the phenomenon of mutually assured destruction (MAD) prevented the Cold War from turning hot.  He presents the plausible assertions that even if Iran acquired nuclear weapons it is very unlikely that it would use them to attack Israel or pass them on to terrorist groups, the two mostly commonly cited reasons why Iran cannot be allowed to get the bomb, even if military action is necessary to stop it.  Either action would be self-destructive and would virtually assure that a U.S.-backed coalition would remove Iran’s current regime by military force.  Despite their incendiary rhetoric, Iran’s leaders are aware of this fact.

However, this doesn’t mean that the “best possible outcome” is for Iran to get the bomb, and Waltz makes some pretty outrageous claims to back up this assertion, the worst of which is that the world might be better off with more nuclear weapons, or in his words:  “When it comes to nuclear weapons, now as ever, more may be better.”  Common sense would seem to suggest otherwise.  Does the fact that MAD helped prevent the U.S. and the Soviet Union from engaging in a nuclear war really mean that the world would be better off with more nuclear weapons?  Humanity survived the Cold War, but this result wasn’t inevitable.  A nuclear-armed Israel balanced by a nuclear-armed Iran might add stability to the Middle East, but it could also make a volatile region even more dangerous.  This is not a gamble that any sensible policy maker should be willing to make.   

Waltz also argues that if Iran goes nuclear, the relationship between India and Pakistan offers a model for Iran and Israel to follow: “In 1991, the historical rivals India and Pakistan signed a treaty agreeing not to target each other’s nuclear facilities.  They realized that far more worrisome than their adversary’s nuclear deterrent was the instability produced by challenges to it.  Since then, even in the face of high tensions and risky provocations, the two countries have kept the peace.  Israel and Iran would do well to consider this precedent.”  You don’t have to be an expert in international relations to wonder how someone could present the relationship between India and Pakistan as an example to follow.  These two countries have “kept the peace” in the very narrow sense that they haven’t gone to war since signing the treaty, but Pakistani-backed militants continue to attack India.  Some commentators plausibly argue that Pakistan continues to back these militants because India’s options for responding are limited by the fact that Pakistan has nuclear weapons.  This is hardly a precedent one should advocate following.     

Reading Waltz’s article creates the impression that he’s proposing a strategy for the board game Risk rather than writing about the real world.  Stepping back and allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons might be a fun strategy to play in a war game, but implementing it in the real world could be just as dangerous as taking the opposite approach and bombing Iran’s nuclear sites.  Why would Waltz present such an argument?  If he weren’t already a respected authority in the field of international relations, I would think he did it simply to get published.  But this doesn’t seem to be the case.
 
A better answer is that the realist theory of international relations predicts that a nuclear-armed Iran would add stability to the Middle East.  The simplified version of this theory is that it assumes that states are in a constant struggle for power, and wars happen when states attempt to acquire more power.  However, powerful states balance each other.  One powerful state won’t attack another powerful because it’s a rational actor, and it knows that doing so is not in its interest.  Rivalries between powerful states are thus stabilizing factors.  In Waltz’s application of this theory to the Middle East, there is a power imbalance because Israel is the only nuclear-armed state, and this results in instability.  Balance would be restored if Iran acquired nuclear weapons.  It’s a nice, tidy theory, but I suspect that it’s too neat to provide an accurate prediction of messy, real-world politics.