First we got the bomb, and that was good

by Doctor Science

'Cause we love peace and motherhood.

As you may recall, in early August The Atlantic published an article by Jeffrey Goldberg about how Israel and Iran are getting "to the point of no return" because of Iran's nuclear program. The article got a lot of online and other media attention, so much that The Atlantic put together an online debate that ran August 16-25.

I made an effort to be one of the people reading and commenting on the debate there. You can read my daily extracts here:

• Days 1-2: who's driving this bus, Israel or the US?.
  
• Day 3: would a strike work? realism at the White House?.
• Day 4: the Long Game and containment.
  
• Day 5: how threatening is the threat?.
• Days 6-7 (or so): If force is the answer, what is the question?.
  
• Day 8: Should we give peace a chance?.

Those links doubtless qualify as "tl;dr" for non-masochists. The highlights of the discussion, for me:

1. I emphasized repeatedly that Israel's saber-rattling is largely intended for a domestic audience. Iran is not, in any realistic way, an existential threat to Israel -- but Netanyahu has repeatedly compared Iran to "Amalek", an enemy against whom Israel in the Bible is commanded to use explicitly genocidal force. The Israeli and Iranian governments are both IMHO posturing for their countrymen, inflating their badassery to wow the locals. Elliot Abrams similarly argued that Obama might and should attack Iran to demonstrate his manly firmness for the midterm elections.

2. Gary Milhollin warned that

If Iran truly values its nuclear program, it would play the victim. The attack would give Iran a claim on the sympathy of countries that might otherwise be inclined to shun it, thereby invigorating its campaign to thwart U.S. and Western isolation efforts.

Disgusted, I pointed out that countries that have been bombed do not have to "play" the victim -- the civilian casualties which Milhollin rightly calls "inevitable" do that for them.

And speaking of inevitable civilian casualties: Milhollin asked What would such bombing destroy? without ever mentioning that Iranians (civilian and military) would be killed. How many? Do they estimate casualties in the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, or more? The American (and Israeli) people have proven tolerant of very high casualties on the part of other people, but the rest of the world won't necessarily see things the same way.

That was the only mention of civilian casualties in the Serious People's discussion, even from the comparative peaceniks. Apparently in US Policyland, war only involves "strikes" against infrastructure and (occasionally) armed forces -- anything else is at most regretable collateral damage. But then, though at least half the Serious People in this debate were wrong about the Iraq War, their careers seem to have suffered no collateral damage -- so perhaps they think it can't be an important issue overall.

3. Patrick Clawson said that disagreements between the US and Israel are due in part to

differing perception about military force. Americans tend to like and embrace the Powell Doctrine: the overwhelming use of force to achieve decisive results. The view of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is encapsulated in the unfortunate expression "mow the grass"

I pointed out that Mr. Clawson mis-states the Powell Doctrine, even as he's linking to a Wikipedia article that exposes his mistatement.

IMHO what Americans like about the Powell Doctrine is the tests a proposed action must pass, including: Do we have a clear attainable objective? Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed? Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted? Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement? Do we have genuine broad international support? These tests overlap with traditional "just war" jus ad bellum criteria, especially those specifying a just cause, probability of success, proportionality, and last resort.

It is painfully obvious that Powell's own promotion of the Iraq War violated the Powell Doctrine (not to mention Just War Doctrine, as the Pope pointed out at the time). Nonetheless, the Powell Doctrine -- as I at least understand it -- crucially depends on circumspection, reluctance to use force, and careful planning, before you get to the fun part bit about overwhelming force and decisive results.

I *really hope* that Mr. Clawson's limited understanding of the Powell Doctrine is his alone; I very much fear that he reflects the general consensus of the US policy/security community. It's curious, though, that Clawson cites the Powell Doctrine to support his position -- even though it doesn't.

4. Another commenter, democraticcore, asked "why would Iran want nuclear weapons?" Hir answer: for defense against the US.

Imagine that you are a decision maker in Tehran listening to [Bush's "Axis of Evil"] speech. You look at one side of the Axis, Iraq. Iraq has no nuclear weapons and indeed no WMD program of an kind. It gets invaded, its regime is overthrown, and the country is devastated.

Then you look at the other side of the Axis, North Korea. It has nuclear weapons. It doesn't get invaded or even threatened in any meaningful way. Its looney leader even gets gifts of the latest DVDs from the US.

So the Iranian decision maker asks himself: Do we want to end up like Iraq or North Korea?

This is the kind of insight I would have expected to see from the Very Serious People, but didn't.

5. Both Reuel Marc Gerecht (pro-war) and Marc Lynch (not-as-pro-war) agreed on

liberal democracies' tendency to avoid tough decisions and push decisions to go to war down the road.

For a kinda-sorta peacenik (by the standards of this discussion), Lynch sure seems admiring of tough, firm, manly non-liberal non-democracies.

Less metaphorically, I do not see the Spanish-American War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, or the Iraq War as ones the US was particularly reluctant to enter. On the contrary, in my experience the tough decision that our system tends to avoid is the one that *ends* a war, that admits failure. In a democracy, the sunk costs of war are so monstrous that once we start we *cannot* seem to finish, because admitting that it was a bad idea is intolerable to leaders and populace alike.

Not to mention that IMHO "pushing decisions to go to war down the road" is a *good* thing, because it buys years of peace that are worth living in. To Gerecht, peace seems always to be the twin of appeasement, a time-out at best between the wars where the real work of history takes place. To most human beings, though, peace is an active good: we little people may not get to make history, but at least we get to *live*.

---

The summary of my summary: The Important, Very Serious People performed the dance of Tough Decisions and Firm Resolve. The Little People in the comments wondered who the VSPs are dancing for.

Comments

[Eric Martin]

Really. Apocalyptic and all ;)

[Slartibartfast]

I have no idea what the lead time would be to make a missile-capable warhead. That may be out of reach for Iran for quite sometime.

This part I agree with.

It's not so much the lack of suitable airframes or vehicles to launch them from, it's more along the lines of compacting and weaponizing the physics package, getting the fuzing to work, and other fine details like achieving sufficient standoff range so as not to kill the aircrew.

Undoubtedly there are things that I haven't considered, as well.

[Model 62]

it's more along the lines of compacting and weaponizing the physics package

If "physics package" = nuclear warhead, I have to say that's some nifty jargoneering.

A plain old chemical explosive might be called a "chemistry package" or a "soda fountain."

An old fashioned cannonball could also be called a "physics package" but maybe we could use "newton's apple" instead, to differentiate.

[Slartibartfast]

I have to say that's some nifty jargoneering.

Linkified.

Even urban dictionary has an (kid-friendly, from what I can tell) entry for this. It's not new terminology.

[McKinneyTexas]

It's not so much the lack of suitable airframes or vehicles to launch them from, it's more along the lines of compacting and weaponizing the physics package, getting the fuzing to work, and other fine details like achieving sufficient standoff range so as not to kill the aircrew.

Yeah, I knew that.

[elm]

Another element worth noting in any discussion of nuclear proliferation is that not all nuclear bombs are the same.

At the top end, two and three stage bombs are enormous (tested to 50 megatons, with deliverable bombs of 25 megatons). They're also efficient in expensive fissile material (U-238 or Pu-239). But they're complicated to build and demand testing.

At the bottom end, there are simple gun-style (Little Boy) and two-point implosion designs that don't need much (if any) testing. But they require lots of expensive fissile material and don't give high yields (dozens of kilotons).

In principle, Iran could develop the latter type (expensive & high-yield) either in secret (if it could conceal such high enrichment activity) or in a crash program. It absolutely couldn't conceal the former (due to testing requirements) or develop it rapidly.

Almost any nation with 150 pounds of 80% enriched Uranium could build a Little Boy device. But the low efficiency/high cost and low yield nature of such devices makes them unattractive.

[Slartibartfast]

That's pretty much what I was getting at with compacting the physics package, elm.

Sorry for the verbal shorthand; this stuff has been discussed so much here and elsewhere that I tend to assume that we're all on the same page.

[elm]

Slarti: I'd actually missed this entire second page of comments when I posted that, sorry if it looked like I was trying to correct you.

My own familiarity with nuclear warhead designs is that of an interested amateur at best. The Manhattan Project always fascinated me as a science and engineering project both because of the scale and the talent involved.

[Enrique Arroyo]

Any function A^Bx that has A as a positive real number > 1 and B is a negative number will approach zero as X goes to infinity. Approaches zero is not, in any context I'm aware of, consistent with unbounded growth.

Aha, this reveals the source of the misunderstanding. You were using "exponent" to mean "coefficient in the exponent" in your first post, I was reading "exponent" as, well, "exponent". I'm sure you can see now why your point wasn't immediately transparent.

[Eric Martin]

Well, I for one am glad that's settled.

[McKinneyTexas]

. You were using "exponent" to mean "coefficient in the exponent" in your first post, I was reading "exponent" as, well, "exponent".

Yeah, I knew that.

[Gary Farber]

I forgot I wrote this almost a year ago.

I still particularly recommend reading about John Coster-Mullen building his own reconstruction of Little Boy.

[Hartmut]

If 'portable' means 'fitting into a container' (I assume this means the standard design as used on ships and lorries) then I am not aware of any nuke yet built not qualifying (including the tsar bomba).
The maximum size I'd consider portable would be 'light and small enough for a standard pickup truck or delivery van'.
---
Concerning Hitler
When German forces reoccupied the Rhineland, Hitler was still deterrable. He had issued strict orders to withdraw immediately, should military resistance be encountered. It was a test case to evaluate how far he could go without war. Also WW2 could have ended by Christmas 1939 had France struck instead of stuck. The German defenses in the West were pure bluff.
I am inclined to say that WW2 looks like all parties taking turns in committing blunders that look incredible in hindsight.

[Sebastian]

My head hurts with so many confusions on both sides. You can't have a good discussion about this topic without dealing with quite a few things that both sides sort of avoid talking about.

For the pro-bombing groups:

We aren't talking about a one location Osirak type situation here. The Iranian program/programs (whether you characterize them as peaceful, or not) are dispersed across a number of locations. Bombing one location once, is of course an act of war, but in limited situations where the world is willing to look the other way sometimes countries can get away with it. Bombing multiple locations of the type necessary to strongly set back Iran's nuclear programs will be a much larger scale and would constitute ongoing war with Iran. We definitely aren't talking about a one-time, easy to pull off, Osirak-like event.

If you are talking about anything less than full blown war against Iran, you aren't being realistic. And if you are talking about going to full blown war against Iran at this point, you are an idiot.

To the extent that the anti-bombing groups are making that point, I'm in total agreement.

However, a lot of the rest of the foreign policy discussion seems to be ad hoc rationalization of the fact that we certainly shouldn't go to war with Iran so of course a nuclear Iran couldn't really be that bad.

A nuclear Iran not only could be a really bad development in an already unstable area, it strikes as *very likely to be* a very bad development.

Iran is engaging in war-by-proxy against Israel right now, and has been doing so for decades. Those rockets aren't being manufactured in the West Bank, nor in Lebanon. They aren't being paid for by the wonderful economic output of South Lebanon nor any of the Palestinian territories. Iran is sending munitions because it really does want to support war against Israel. And it doesn't have to be a war of conquest, it can just be a war of destruction. Destruction is actually quite a bit easier than conquest. At what point will the US get involved to stop Iran from continuing and advancing its war by proxy? I strongly suggest that with a nuclear Iran, the point will be: no point whatsoever. That probably isn't good for long term prospects of the Israeli peace process--though I suppose if you want to pronounce it irretrievably dead anyway that would be one thing.

Further, the idea that Iran is too militarily weak for a war of conquest in the Middle East isn't well founded. It depends on who they're up against. They are certainly capable of completely conquering and controlling for example the UAE, and through that intimidating or creating a near vassal in Oman. That of course would give them complete control of the Strait of Hormuz which would be problematic to say the least.

And of course the calculations regarding the Strait of Hormuz even without conquest of other countries would change for the worse with a nuclear Iran.

Also, nuclear weapons from Iran really can represent an existential threat to Israel. A huge percentage of Israel's population is concentrated in just a very few cities. Someone could destroy about 2/3 of the population with just a very few nuclear bombs. The same is not true of Iran.

Further, I'm not reassured by the idea that Iran will certainly be deterred by the allegedly certain threat that destroying Israel would be suicidal. Considering that the US and USSR stepped right to the brink of destroying themselves and most of the civilized world at least once, and frighteningly close by accident on at least one other occasion, makes that reassurance ring somewhat hollow.

Are most of the people here recommending for example an explicit outside threat to rain nuclear annihilation on all of Iran if it should destroy 'only' 2/3 the population of Israel? Commit to killing 70 million mostly innocent people who probably don't have any real input for their government in response to the destruction of a handful of cities? I doubt it (and to be clear I'm not advocating it either). So then we are relying on Israel's counter-strike to deter. And there things get scary if a few people in the wrong places can be convinced that most of Israel's counterstrike capability can be neutralized. That kind of miscalculation is exactly the kind of thing that can lead to ugly decision-making and is exactly the kind of thing that we have seen again and again cause wars. (See for example Hartmut talking about the Rhineland.)

No, we can't and shouldn't start war with Iran over their nuclear program. No it wouldn't be anything like Osirak.

But I don't think we should downplay any of the negatives of a nuclear Iran. It will almost certainly be a very bad thing. And near-100% discount of the black swan of *really bad* decision making leading to actual nuclear exchanges strikes me as overly hopeful considering the incredibly long track record of incredibly bad decisions made vis-a-vis Israel and other countries in the area (on both sides).

[Eric Martin]

Further, the idea that Iran is too militarily weak for a war of conquest in the Middle East isn't well founded. It depends on who they're up against. They are certainly capable of completely conquering and controlling for example the UAE, and through that intimidating or creating a near vassal in Oman. That of course would give them complete control of the Strait of Hormuz which would be problematic to say the least.

Even this is highly, highly debatable.

They are militarily capable in some sense, but maintaining an occupation, logistically, is enormously taxing on both your treasury and your military.

Even a small country like the UAE would be difficult to hold, and, of course, outside parties (like, say, the US) would probably hit them hard like we did Iraq and Kuwait or, at the very, very least, fund an insurgency that will dog their occupation and make it impossible financially/militarily.

Ditto Oman.

This is very low on my concern-o-meter.

Also, nuclear weapons from Iran really can represent an existential threat to Israel. A huge percentage of Israel's population is concentrated in just a very few cities. Someone could destroy about 2/3 of the population with just a very few nuclear bombs. The same is not true of Iran.

Two thoughts:

1. I never said that Iranian nukes couldn't, logistically, destroy Israel, I said a few other things instead. Iran would not do so, because doing so would:

A. Mean the end of Iran due to Israel and/or the US' counterstrikes.

B. Destroy one of Islam's holiest sites.

C. Kill millions of Palestinians.

Recall, Iran's beef with Israel is on behalf of the Palestinians, and thus their annihilation in their defense would be counterproductive.

Further, I'm not reassured by the idea that Iran will certainly be deterred by the allegedly certain threat that destroying Israel would be suicidal. Considering that the US and USSR stepped right to the brink of destroying themselves and most of the civilized world at least once, and frighteningly close by accident on at least one other occasion, makes that reassurance ring somewhat hollow.

And yet India and Pakistan have managed. As have North Korea and South, etc. In fact, the entire history of nuclear weapons has been one, unperturbed streak.

Could it end? Sure, but the trends certainly point in the other direction.

Are most of the people here recommending for example an explicit outside threat to rain nuclear annihilation on all of Iran if it should destroy 'only' 2/3 the population of Israel? Commit to killing 70 million mostly innocent people who probably don't have any real input for their government in response to the destruction of a handful of cities? I doubt it (and to be clear I'm not advocating it either). So then we are relying on Israel's counter-strike to deter. And there things get scary if a few people in the wrong places can be convinced that most of Israel's counterstrike capability can be neutralized. That kind of miscalculation is exactly the kind of thing that can lead to ugly decision-making and is exactly the kind of thing that we have seen again and again cause wars. (See for example Hartmut talking about the Rhineland.)

I don't think threatened counterstrikes need to be so detailed, really. Nuclear umbrellas and other joint defense agreements do not delve into such minutia.

It is enough that they are in place.

[Eric Martin]

At what point will the US get involved to stop Iran from continuing and advancing its war by proxy? I strongly suggest that with a nuclear Iran, the point will be: no point whatsoever.

Are you suggesting that the US would intervene were Iran non-nuclear?

If so, when and why not yet?

[Sebastian]

"B. Destroy one of Islam's holiest sites.

C. Kill millions of Palestinians.

Recall, Iran's beef with Israel is on behalf of the Palestinians, and thus their annihilation in their defense would be counterproductive."

This isn't accurate. Except for large scale strikes of the US/USSR style, the radiation drift issue isn't nearly as big a deal as it gets played out in popular culture. You could destroy enough of Israel's population to count it as gone without a direct hit on the contested parts of Jerusalem itself (an off-side hit to the Israeli metropolitan areas would be just fine. You wouldn't have a permanent problem at the Dome of the Rock and if you did it right, you wouldn't have to have any problem.) The West Bank and Gaza wouldn't have to be hit at all, so I'm not sure what you mean by 'millions of Palestinians'.

"And yet India and Pakistan have managed. As have North Korea and South, etc. In fact, the entire history of nuclear weapons has been one, unperturbed streak.

Could it end? Sure, but the trends certainly point in the other direction."

You sound exactly like a early 2000s era economist talking about the Great Moderation since the Depression and how now that central bankers had their acts together we just needed to find the best way to increase growth even more. That probably shouldn't be reassuring.

And you don't really deal with the fact that the US and USSR really did almost go there with the whole world, at least twice. I guess my faith in humans continually avoiding idiocy isn't as great.

[Eric Martin]

This isn't accurate. Except for large scale strikes of the US/USSR style, the radiation drift issue isn't nearly as big a deal as it gets played out in popular culture. You could destroy enough of Israel's population to count it as gone without a direct hit on the contested parts of Jerusalem itself (an off-side hit to the Israeli metropolitan areas would be just fine. You wouldn't have a permanent problem at the Dome of the Rock and if you did it right, you wouldn't have to have any problem.) The West Bank and Gaza wouldn't have to be hit at all, so I'm not sure what you mean by 'millions of Palestinians'.

This is either unlikely, or untrue, given the nature of the nuclear weapons that Iran would even develop given its existing infrastructure.

Also, you're talking about a certain level of accuracy in delivery systems that Iran doesn't have.

It would be an enormous risk, and would require, again, accuracy that Iran could not really rely on.

You sound exactly like a early 2000s era economist talking about the Great Moderation since the Depression and how now that central bankers had their acts together we just needed to find the best way to increase growth even more. That probably shouldn't be reassuring.

No, I sound exactly like someone talking about the history of nuclear weapons. I mean, otherwise, I am totally incapable of responding to this.

Should I declare some person that you sound like, make a conclusion based on my declaration and then present that as an argument?

And you don't really deal with the fact that the US and USSR really did almost go there with the whole world, at least twice. I guess my faith in humans continually avoiding idiocy isn't as great.

Right, and each time we stepped down from the brink. But faith is all we really have in a nuclear age, right? I mean, we still rely on Russia, the US, Pakistan, NoKo, etc.

Same with, possibly, Iran.

Even though, again, there is little evidence that they even have an active weapons program.

[Sebastian]

"No, I sound exactly like someone talking about the history of nuclear weapons. I mean, otherwise, I am totally incapable of responding to this.

Should I declare some person that you sound like, make a conclusion based on my declaration and then present that as an argument?"

No, you're making a declaration of probabilities and trends based on an extremely small subset of countries and events. I'm not committing a logical fallacy by drawing the analogy. Nor am I attacking your argument in some unfair or unanswerable way. Essentially you are saying that with the very small number of data points you have, you are confident to talk about the trends. I'm not. I don't think you have very many data points and can't realistically talk about trends.

The analogy I drew with economists and the Great Moderation (now seen as probably an illusion) involves more data points, repeated more times, with more actors, over a longer period, than the trend you offer. Yet they were still wrong.

[Eric Martin]

No, you're making a declaration of probabilities and trends based on an extremely small subset of countries and events.

OK, Seb, but the alternative is to look at that small subset and claim that an outlier is probable.

While a subset that all points in one direction is not overly persuasive that future events will conform, it is certainly not an indication that they won't.

The Iranian regime has acted quite deftly, and quite adeptly, at maintaining power in the face of serious international resistance over the past 30 years.

They don't look like the sort that will throw that all away to undertake a folly of a nuclear strike.

Given that, and what data we have on how every other nuclear power has acted, I'm not overly concerned.