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Ilan Goldenberg warms my tyranny-lovin' heart by reporting that James Dobbins -- a very Serious Person by any measure -- is arguing against the "all options on the table" approach to Iran:
Jim Dobbins - A man who has just a bit of history of dealing with some pretty bad guys and doing it effectively - then chimed in arguing that the whole idea that blatant military threats had to be a part of effective negotiations was simply ahistorical. He argued that we never used military threats when negotiating with the Russians or Chinese during the Cold War. We just made clear what our redlines were and that worked pretty well, but we never in negotiations actually threatened them. He then said that in his forty year career he had negotiated with Soviet Apparatchiks, Afghan warlords, Somali warlords, Serbs and Bosnians. He found that when explicit military threats were part of the negotiations the negotiations would fail. So we should just stick the military threat back in the drawer. The Iranians know it’s there. We don’t need to waive it in their face.The "all options on the table" formula has always been absurd -- it's a line meant to satisfy domestic political constituencies, not strengthen our hand in negotiations. The United States possesses a military with more than 1,400,000 active duty members controlling literally thousands of tanks, warplanes, aircraft carriers, intercontinental missiles, and supply ships. We have the capacity to attack whoever we want. No one is confused on this point. But the "all options on the table" formula has two particularly nasty side effects. The first is that it rhetorically commits the president to launching an attack on Iran if Iraq attains -- or proves to be on the verge of attaining -- nuclear weapons. A weaponized Iran is, in the long run, fairly likely. But there's no reason to believe that a nuclear-equipped regime could not be deterred or has any serious interest in committing national suicide. If the day comes when we must decide whether to live with a nuclear Iran -- as we lived with a nuclear Russia and live with a nuclear Pakistan and North Korea -- or slaughter hundreds of thousands in a war, it would probably be best if the president didn't feel constrained by bellicose rhetoric from his past.On the opposite end, threatening Iran leads us in a stupid circle. Iran's main danger -- and in particular the main danger that a nuclear weapon would abate -- is invasion from the United States. Being cavalier with our willingness to attack and publicly calling for regime change only strengthens their perceived need for a nuke. Meanwhile, we create a context in which a changed Iranian policy would not be seen as the result of dignified negotiations, but as a weak country backing down before a strong one. For Tehran's leaders, who must deal with hardliners even nuttier than themselves, this is suicide. But it is the set of incentives we are setting up, and all so our politicians can look tough when they give speeches.
