Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times Endorses Barack Obama

Gideon Rachman:

FT.com / Columnists / Gideon Rachman - Back Obama for commander-in-chief: [W]hile the armchair generals in Washington will denounce Mr Obama for weakness on Iran, the real generals support his position. The great constraint on the radicals in the Bush administration is that the US’s top brass has made it clear that it has no appetite for launching yet another war... the last thing the American military needs is a third front.

The generals know that the idea of a surgical strike to “take out” Iran’s nuclear facilities is a fantasy.... Mr McCain would risk all this because he believes that the Iranian leadership just might be crazy enough to risk Armageddon by using nuclear weapons or passing them to terrorists. Talk long enough about President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad’s religious beliefs and you just might scare yourself into thinking that it is worth launching the third and biggest war in America’s stumbling bid to remake the Middle East.

But the calmer heads around Mr Obama are, fortunately, not convinced.... The US has already had to learn to live with nuclear weapons in the hands of countries that are far more oppressive and irrational than Iran: North Korea, Mao’s China, the Soviet Union.

One of the great lessons of international relations since 1945 is that nuclear deterrence has worked. Mr Obama respects that lesson. Mr McCain does not. For that reason alone, Mr Obama would make the better commander-in-chief.

Comments

[Robby]

Hi Brad. What was your take on the Cowen/Mankiw/Krugman/Thoma debate about Cowen's "Means Testing for Medicare" article in the NYTimes from Sunday?

[JFred]

Deterrence is an experiment. If it is off by just a bit there is a big boom. Making such an experiment with the terrorist-supporting state of Iran is insanely dangerous. Will Iran give nukes to terrorists? Want to find out? Give Obama a try, he'll run that experiment for you.

That's the sales pitch for Obama on foreign policy? Using nukes is okay with him?

[JFred]

Nobody knows whether deterrence will work with Iran. Saying Iran is like the Soviet Union is the same as saying onions are like shoes. Deterrence is an experiment. If the experiment is off by just a tad there is a big boom. Some people are willing to gamble that. Others aren't.

If we had better information on Iranian intentions we could make more informed decisions. As it is, we just have to make sure Iran doesn't get nuclear weapons. Rachman thinks it's okay if Iran gets nukes. Nothing could be more insane.

[vtcodger]

A surgical strike implies that one knows what to surger. I imagine Iran, Brazil, Mexico, and Canada as well as 40 or 50 other countries have a pretty good idea how they will acquire nuclear warheads should they need them. What's at issue is how big and aggressive Iran's program is. They'd have to be awfully stupid to tell us and I would imagine that they have gone to great lengths to make sure that the crazies in charge of US foreign policy know neither how large the program is, nor where the facilities are. What, exactly, are we going to surgically strike?

[bigTom]

You can see the mentality we are up against, with JFred's comments. We need to take notes of a few things: (1) During the Iran Iraq war, Saddam routinely used chemical weapons against Iran, but Iran considered such weapons unholy and never reciprocated. (2) Iran is fully within their rights under the NPT to pursue enrichment. (3) Amedinejad does not have the kind of decision making power within Iran that say the US president has. (4) If they did acquire weapons (their mullahs say nuclear weapons are unislamic), it is Israel's problem, not ours. Israel has more than enough capability to handle the threat.

[jamzo]

"One of the great lessons of international relations since 1945 is that nuclear deterrence has worked. Mr Obama respects that lesson. Mr McCain does not. For that reason alone, Mr Obama would make the better commander-in-chief"

nuclear deterrence - "do not worry about russia's nuclear weapons because if they use them we will use ours and that will be a real ness that they don't want and neither do we"

i approve of the gentlemen's endorsement but nuclear deterrance doctrine is the proverbial "fighting the last war"

nuclear deterrence was widely given credit for reducing the probability of conflict between the US and USSR but did not prevent surrogate wars in vietnam and africa and the popularity of the nuclear deterrent encouraged countries to develop nuclear weapons

lesson in international relations - nuclear deterrence is no longer a viable defense against fear of nuclear weapons

would the united states, UK, france, or russia use nuclear weapons to resolve conflicts with another country?

would the US would use nuclear weapons on iran if iran used a nuclear weapon against israel?

would the US would use nuclear weapons on pakistan if pakistan used a nuclear weapon against india?

would pakistan use nuclear weapons against isreal if isreal use nuclear weapons against iran?

lesson in international relations - a country can acquire nuclear weapons if it tries hard

who can stop them?

fear of nuclear weapons continues to be an important issue

there is fear about increasing nuclear weapon capability

israel, india, pakistan, north korea, iran, sadaam's iraq have acquired or are/were reported to be acquiring nuclear weapons

there is fear that terrorists will get their hands on russian or pakistani nuclear weapons

are these fears of nuclear weapons realistic and meaningful?

some politicians use these fears as political weapons

this is one of the principal lessons of american politics and international relations of the iraq debacle

fear of nuclear weapons was how bush-cheney-powell manipulated congress and the american people to support their wish to war against iraq

what is importnat is how will obamma or mccain deal with fears of nuclear weapons?

i think mcain will stroke this fear

i am not sure how obamma will deal with it

[dilbert dogbert]

Why the concern about Iran when Pakistan has the weapon and is most likely working on flight hardware and the delivery system? Pakistan is a failed state and as far as I know Iran is not.
To me the concern seems misplaced.

[bigTom]

dilbert is right, although I don't consider Pakistan to yet be a failed state, but it is teetering on the brink. The biggest threat is what might happen to Pakistan, they are currently suffering from a combination of economic collapse, severe energy and food shortages. Our dual track (AlQaeda plus Iran) minds are causing to ignore, and exacerbate one of the most dangerous developing problems of our time.

[Barkley Rosser]

JFred,

There is also the minor detail that the intel agencies of the US have unanimously declared in the NIE that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons. The whole premise of this discussion is just off base, although I agree with Gideon Rachman that Obama is more reasonable about foreign policy than is McCain (or Bush) and that it is quite likely that Obama and Petraeus had a very friendly chat.