What Would You Do?

When evaluating strategy, most people tend to think very shallowly: they act as though their enemy is a static entity which absorbs what their actions, but does not act intelligently on its own. There is a technical term for these people: losers. If you plan only for what you know now, and assume that your enemy will not change and adapt just as you change and adapt, then you will lose. And by the way, this is true in business and politics as in warfare.

The way to think about strategy in a way that allows you to achieve your objectives (that is, to win) is to assume that your enemy knows everything that you are planning and all your caveats and weaknesses and guesses. Then, you look at the situation from their point of view, including that knowledge, and you think: if I were them, what would I do to make life miserable for me? In other words, you have to plan for what you know of the enemy's capabilities and goals, and assume that the enemy knows your intentions and capabilities with complete certainty and veracity. Then, you have to take your best shot and hope it was enough.

Trent Telenko hints at that kind of thinking in this post:

Does anyone doubt for a moment that Israel will, absolutely, positively WILL preemptively destroy Iranian nuclear facilities, with nukes if necessary, to prevent another holocaust?"

The answer, of course, is that many people doubt that, because of the problem with thinking that I outlined above.

But let's look at Iran's position, and assume for a moment that we are the absolute ruler of Iran. Iran's position is this:

• Iran is not only a theocracy, it is also the country which turned the jihadi mindset of paranoia, xenophobia, and hatred from the madness of a small number of intellectuals into State policy.
• Iran's major enemies are Israel (for religious reasons alone) and the United States (which opposes Iran's plan to restore the caliphate under Iranian auspices. Israel is not an active threat against Iran as long as Iran doesn't make it so, but Iran is incapable of not making it so. Primarily, this is because the destruction of Israel by Iran would so raise its prestige in the Muslim world that it would make almost inevitible that Iran would succeed in uniting the Muslim world under it's rulership. The United States has since 9/11 been actively and irrevocably an enemy of Iran's current government, though conveniently (for Iran) many Americans don't realize that.
• Iran is conventionally strong enough to defend itself against invasion from all likely enemies except for the United States. Israel is stronger than Iran, but so far away that Israel could not attempt to occupy Iran in any meaningful way (for both logistics and manpower reasons). Russia is not capable of pacifying Afghanistan or Chechnya, and Iran would be much harder. China is too far away to sustain an invasion, given their poor logistics, though unlike Israel they have the manpower to sustain the occupation. In other words, Iran is the regional power in the Middle East.
• But...Iran has no hope of defending against the United States. While it would take longer for the US to take out Iran than Iraq, and while it would take more American forces, it is well within the current US capability to defeat and occupy Iran. It's also likely, given the Westernization, education and discontent current in Iran, that the occupation of Iran would be short and easily successful - much more so than in Iraq.
• Such a move would be disastrous, because it would be the end of the restoration of the Caliphate under Iranian auspices.
• It would also be another disastrous blow to the restoration of the Caliphate under al Qaeda and Wahabbi auspices, because it would force the jihadis to fight actively across the entire sweep from Iraq to Afghanistan. And in an active fight, the jihadis tend to die in large numbers and to little practical effect (with the exception of fawning adulation from Reuters, et al). As a result, it is in al Qaeda's and Saudi Arabia's interest to prevent Iran from being invaded by the US and occupied. This makes them useful allies.
• There is one example of a country which has managed to utterly prevent a US invasion: North Korea. It has done so by having a rudimentary nuclear capability - a few weapons - and a limited delivery mechanism.
• Building nuclear facilities aboveground makes them liable to destruction by US or Israeli air strikes, which have few negative consequences for either nation. As a result, all critical nuclear facilities must be under ground - deep under ground so that the US earth penetrating bombs cannot reach them.

Given this situation, what would you do? Me, I'd do everything possible to tie down the United States military so they'd be too busy to invade me, and I would develop nuclear weapons as quickly as possible, mostly by exchanging cash and oil, which I have in plenty, for nuclear technology, which France and Russia and China and North Korea have. I would build my nuclear program largely underground, and widely dispersed. There is ample evidence that Iran has attempted and is attempting to do all of these things.

Now let's look at Israel's situation:

• There is the situation with Iran, described above. In addition, Iran has been the benefactor for many years of Hizb'allah, one of the major terror threats against Israel.
• But Iran is hardly alone. Egypt is nominally at peace with Israel, and will likely remain so as long as it is convinced that it would be destroyed if it attacked Israel, and not likely a moment longer. The peace with Jordan is more likely to last, because Jordan needs Israel's good will more than it needs to be seen as standing up to Israel, at least until and unless the Palestinians flood into Jordan, at which time peace is no longer assured. Pretty much every other Arab state (not all, but almost all) are actively belligerent against Israel and would attack at a moment's notice if they thought they could win. In the meantime, they are using terrorism and the Palestinian Authority to keep Israel as off-balance as possible.
• Given the genocidal hatred of the Muslims towards Israel, it's a given that if a Muslim country were to obtain nuclear weapons, those weapons would be used against Israel more or less immediately. It's likely that the method of employment would be to give a weapon to a terrorist group, unless the enemy were to have many nuclear weapons, so that he could be insured of destroying Israel utterly even at the cost of themselves being utterly destroyed.
• Given that the jihadis yearn for death, a suicidal attack (not suicide of the bombers, necessarily, but of the whole country that undertook the attack) is hardly unlikley should a Muslim country obtain nuclear weapons.
• Israel itself has a large nuclear arsenal (likely 200-300 warheads) and robust delivery mechanisms of multiple kinds.
• The enemy could not destroy Israel without nuclear weapons, though Israel would suffer heavily in any large-scale conventional war.
• The United States can only be fitfully counted on to support Israel, and most other countries can be reliably counted on to oppose Israel at every turn.

Given this situation, if you were the absolute ruler of Israel, what would you do? I would try to convince the other countries to aggressively act to prevent nuclear proliferation into the Arab/Muslim world. I would also maintain and expand my nuclear arsenal and delivery systems. I would try to foment discord and division between different Arab factions. I would try to disengage from Palestine and let them tear themselves apart in factional fighting. I would maintain my conventional military strength and stockpile as much fuel and ammunition as I could against any eventuality.

Most importantly, if it became apparent that any Arab or Muslim nation were about to obtain a nuclear capability, and no other nation were going to stop that from happening, I would annihilate that capability no matter the cost, because the alternative would be the annihilation of Israel.

In the case of Iran, that poses some problems: because the Iranian capability is spread among a large number of sites, and is deeply buried, so it would be difficult to destroy or hinder. The upshot of this is that I would have to use nuclear weapons for attacks on at least several, though not all, Iranian targets.

But then I have another problem: Israel would be so roundly condemned for this use of nuclear weapons (witness the condemnation of the United States over Iraq when the US was almost immaculate in warfighting), and given that this is only the normal reaction to Israel existing, it is likely that a large number of nations would move towards sanctions against Israel. In addition to the economic damage, it would be likely that supplies of fuel and weapons from outside would almost completely dry up, and that would mean that in a relatively small amount of time - 18 months at most - Israel would be a shambles. It's also likely that Egypt and Jordan would be compelled to renounce their peace treaties, and it's not inconceivable that the Arab nations would launch an all-out war. If they did this 18 months after the strike, Israel might not be strong enough to withstand the assault.

Given these considerations, I would be strongly tempted to remove my enemies once and for all, so that they couldn't strike in my moment of weakness. The way to do that, of course, is to eliminate their armies, their political structures, and critical infrastructure that they could use to rebuild. This would have to be thorough enough to keep those enemies incapacitated for at least 10 years, because it could take that long to recover Israel's reputation and (more critically) economy and supply situation. So, if I were fairly convinced that Israel was in grave danger of attack in the aftermath of taking out Iran's nuclear capability, I would most likely hit at all of the Arab/Muslim world's military facilities and large units, industrial base, critical infrastructure (including any large cities), and so forth. Some of these attacks would be conventional, but most would be nuclear. And as part of that, I would have to strike Pakistan and eliminate their military and nuclear capability as well, because they are the only Muslim state with a declared nuclear capability, and even if they didn't want to strike directly, there's no guarantee that the ISI wouldn't give weapons to terrorists for revenge attacks.

Now this is not all a given, obviously, but it's clearly possible. So now to the most important point: if you are in charge of US policy, what would you do to head off this course of events?

In the first place, Iran is already your enemy directly, and the current government, while weak, is unlikely to fall to internal revolt. In the second place, Iran is seeking nuclear capability, which would make further intervention after that point very, very costly. In the third place, Israel would go to virtually any length, including potentially nuclear war against the entire Arab/Muslim world, to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

What is it worth to you to prevent this? Would you let Israel annihilate the Arab/Muslim world?

Would you play kick the can via treaties, preventing Israel from stopping this by making it appear that Iran wasn't still seeking a nuclear capability? (This is essentially what Bill Clinton did in Korea in 1996.)

Would you bomb Iranian nuclear facilities to hopefully set them back a few years? (This is what Israel did to Iraq in the 1980s and what Bill Clinton did to Iraq in 1998.) Would you be willing to use nuclear weapons yourself to ensure the destruction of critical and deeply-buried facilities?

Would you be willing to foment a revolution in Iran, and arm and supply it, and provide air power and special forces in support of it? (This is essentially what George Bush did in Afghanistan?)

Would you be willing to invade and occupy Iran? (This is what George Bush did in Iraq.)

How many American lives would you trade for potentially tens of millions of Muslim lives, when many of those Muslims would as soon see you dead?

The thing is, these are not hypothetical questions. They are the questions that the next few years will put to the President, and so they are questions you should consider (if you are an American) when you vote.

For the record, I believe that Kerry would, in extremis, be willing to conventionally bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, and much less likely to support a revolution. Most likely, though, is that Kerry would play kick the can until it's too late to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear capability, at which point it's pretty likely that the Middle East would erupt in nuclear war. (For which I have no doubt that Kerry would cast blame everywhere except upon himself.)

I believe that President Bush would be likely to invade Iran, very likely to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities (potentially, but not likely, with our own nuclear weapons), somewhat likely to support a revolution, and unlikely to either play kick the can or to leave it to the Israelis.

(And frankly, that's a large part of why I will vote for President Bush despite disagreeing with him on abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research, government funding of entitlements and a host of other issues.)

Your beliefs may vary, of course, but I do hope you will at least take the possibilities into account when you vote.

UPDATE (8/12): Francis Porretto has been thinking similar thoughts.

Posted by Jeff at August 11, 2004 03:52 PM | Link Cosmos