Sen. Hillary Clinton, during last Thursday's debate:
"I think that we should be looking to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much further than just Israel," she said. "Of course I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States."
Sen. Hillary Clinton, last night on Countdown:
If Iran does achieve what appears to be its continuing goal of obtaining nuclear weapons -- and I think deterrence has not been effectively used in recent times. We used it very well during the Cold War when we had a bipolar world -- and what I think the president should do and what our policy should be is to make it very clear to the Iranians that they would be risking massive retaliation were they to launch a nuclear attack on Israel.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, this morning on Good Morning America:
"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."
Despite all this, Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson is apparently insisting that Clinton doesn't mean what she's clearly saying: that she would nuke Iran if Iran nuked Israel. Because that's precisely what "Massive Retaliation" means: nuclear annihilation.
To repeat: Israel is not, so far as I'm aware, one of the 50 states in our union. Israel is an ally, one that we surely must work to protect, but in so doing our own security must always be paramount. It would be one thing if Israel were unable to defend itself, but as the various Arab-Israeli wars have clearly demonstrated, Israel can take care of itself. Moreover, although it has never been officially confirmed, Israel has its own nuclear weapons, including nuclear-tipped Harpoon cruise missiles stationed on submarines patrolling the Persian Gulf, Mediterranean Sea, and Indian Ocean. They already have their own nuclear deterrent; why do they need ours?
Imagine what the world would look like the day after the United States "totally obliterated" Iran. Imagine what the world would think of us. Imagine the response from Shiite terrorist groups around the world. We would have proved out point - nuclear annihilation begets nuclear annihilation - but then what?
Now I fully recognize that the point of her statements was to raise the stakes sufficiently high such that her words would never need to be tested. That was the premise of the Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, and thanks to a good bit of diplomacy and lots of luck, it worked. But Iran is not the USSR, and Israel is not one of the 50 US states. They and Iran can play their own game of MAD if they wish, but surely there is no need for us to join in. That should not - must not - be our role in the region.
I expect this kind of nonsense from McCain. But from Sen. Clinton? Don't let her triangulation fool you - she's a hawk, through and through. That's why she won't apologize for her vote to authorize the war, and that's why, no matter what her spokespeople might say, she makes statements like this. Open eyes, people. Open eyes.
UPDATE: FP posted some thoughts on this issue in response to Clinton's initial comments during the debate:
The concept of a "nuclear umbrella" has been around almost since the Cold War and the nuclear arms race began. At the most basic level, it involves a nuclear- weapons state promising to use its nukes to respond if non-nuclear ally is attacked with nuclear weapons. Cold War strategists hoped that "extending" nuclear deterrence like this would cement important alliances and, crucially, eliminate the need for those countries to develop their own nukes. A nuclear umbrella is thus a tool of both diplomacy and of nonproliferation.
The key question here is credibility. How, for instance, would you convince the Soviets that the United States really would risk New York to defend Paris? During the Cold War, U.S. strategists achieved this credibility in several ways (pdf). First, American troops were deployed heavily in allied territory, placing them in the way of any nuclear attack. Second, U.S. nuclear weapons were often deployed in forward locations and sometimes integrated into allied command structures. Third, the umbrella only got extended to countries with which the United States already had strong alliances.Unfortunately, even in Gulf regimes that are friendly to America, all of these preconditions are weak or nonexistent (pdf) -- which does not bode well for Sen. Clinton's proposal. In addition, Iran does not have the ability to project power globally like the Soviet Union did, making any direct threat to U.S. interests unlikely. I should also note that any Iranian nuclear weapon is still a long ways off, and attempting to deter the Iranians is premature at this point.
However, the idea is still worth exploring as a contingency plan, and new ways of establishing credibility and commitment might be possible -- for instance, extending a missile-defense "umbrella," even one that doesn't work very well yet. But although technical measures like these may be part of the solution to U.S. problems in the Middle East, they can't supplant a broader strategy that uses all the diplomatic, political, and economic levers at America's disposal.
I don't think this takes the issue of credibility far enough. MAD wasn't simply the idea that the US would risk NY to defend Paris. Rather, it was the idea that a Soviet first strike would be countered with "massive retaliation." It wasn't just one city that was at stake but all of them. The theory was that if nuclear war meant nuclear annihilation, the nuclear option wasn't really an option.
But that's not what we are talking about here. As Clinton and other pro-"nuclear option" people describe it, what's at risk here is a regional nuclear conflict. In their telling, it seems as if we can extend our umbrella to protect Tel Aviv without risking any of our own cities. By threatening Tehran with nuclear annihilation, they believe that we can deter the Iranians from launching an attack on Israel.
But as FP points out, this threat only works if it is credible. Is it? If we think through the potential ramifications, I just don't think it is.
Imagine, if you will, a nuclear attack by Iran on Tel Aviv. Under this strategy, the US would launch a massive nuclear response against Iran, destroying Tehran and several other major Iranian cities. What then? Assuming that nothing else happens, we will have proved our point, Having demonstrated that we are willing to follow through on our threats, the world will cower in fear.
Except, of course, that it won't. As I wrote above, imagine the hostility this would engender. Imagine the wider war this would set off. Imagine the types of terrorist responses that we would see inside the United States.
And that to me gets to the heart of the matter. Would Americans be willing to risk New York or Los Angeles to defend Tel Aviv? Of course not. No doubt plenty of people in DC talk as if they would, but I cannot believe that they are in any way representative of average Americans. Moreover, I suspect that if you added Washington DC to that previous list of cities, many of their attitudes would rapidly change.
All of this is not to say, of course, that we should not do everything possible to defend our allies. We should, and we must. But Iran is not the USSR, and there are plenty of ways to work with and/or against them that do not involve threatening a nuclear response. I have no problem with Israel making such threats, but it makes absolutely no sense for us to join in.
Why doesn't anyone consider the blowbackthat would come if we were forced by events to implement this policy?
UPDATE II: Here is the full text of Clinton's statement this morning on GMA:
Well, the question was, if Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, what would our response be. And I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran. And I want them to understand that, because it does mean that they have to look very carefully at their society, because at whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program, in the next 10 years during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel we would be able to totally obliterate them. That's a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that, because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic.
Thinking rationally, if you were an Iranian leader and you had just been threatened in this way, what would you do? Would you, a) give up on your nuclear weapons program and, despite the fact that the United States does not recognize the legitimacy of your government, seek a peaceful resolution through negotiation, or b) accelerate your weapons program to the maximum extent possible, shrouding it in ever-deeper layers of secrecy?
From the perspective of the Iranian government, both answers are entirely defensible. However, when you take into account the impact of nationalism on these sorts of questions, I think b is a much more likely answer than a. After all, the United States doesn't talk like this about nuclear powers, now does it? Remember that Iran purchased much of its nuclear technology from Pakistan's AQ Khan, and despite that, you would never see us treat Pakistan this way. Why? Their status as a nuclear power doesn't fully explain things, but it plays much more than a minor role.
Israel sought a nuclear deterrent because it felt threatened. North Korea sought a nuclear deterrent because it felt threatened. Pakistan and India simultaneously pursued nuclear technology because of the threat they posed to one another. The US and the USSR engaged in a multi-decade long arms race because they felt threatened by one another. All of those were "rational" responses to perceived threats. In each and every case where states developed nuclear weapons, the development came in reaction to a perceived threat. And yet somehow we believe that Iran will break this pattern? Why?
I mean that as a serious question. Why should we believe that Iran will behave differently than all of the other nations across the past 60 years of history? And perhaps even more importantly, why, from the point of view of the Iranian people and their leaders, should we expect them to behave differently than everyone else?
We need to stop believing that we can simply impose our will on the rest of the world. Doing so is not only stupid, it is also often deeply counterproductive.
Remember: the goal of a terrorist organization like al Qaeda is to create chaos. They cannot defeat us on a level playing field, so they must deliberately create and exploit chaos if they are to have any hope of achieving their goals. One of our primary missions in the world should therefore be to create international institutions and frameworks that foster peace and stability, both within states and among them. To do that in a way that simultaneously fosters democracy and protects human rights is difficult, but it is not impossible, so long as we stop deliberately creating conditions that undermine that stability. And that's precisely what statements such as this are likely to do.
Al Qaeda hates Iran. Sunni extremists see Shiite extremists as the worst sort of heretics. Al Qaeda would shed no tears if a nuclear catastrophe were to drag down both Israel and Iran. In fact, its fairly easy to imagine a scenario in which they would attempt to provoke a crisis that led to just such an outcome. Knowing that, we ought to be doing everything possible to defuse tensions, not ratchet them up. The higher the pressure, the greater the possibility of a catastrophic mistake.
And to reiterate: all of this is unnecessary because Israel already has its own nuclear deterrent. There is a role for the United States to play here, but this is not it.
UPDATE III: Over at the Guardian's Comment is Free, Richard Silverstein writes:
On Warren Olney's To the Point radio show today, Barack Obama's Middle East adviser and former congressman Mel Levine noted that during the Eisenhower administration John Foster Dulles promised the same "massive retaliation" should the Soviet Union attack the US or its allies. This was widely understood as a threat of nuclear attack. Is this really the type of president Americans want? One who so demonises Iran that she's prepared to go to war at the first sign of conflict in the Middle East? Do we want to create a Middle East cold war like the one we had with the Soviets for four decades?
Equally troubling is the fact that Israel, in Clinton's conception, is merely an extension of the US - a member of the greater commonwealth, if you will. Of course, I find the notion of an Iranian attack on Israel disturbing as well. But the idea that we would react to an attack on Israel as if it were an attack on ourselves ties me up in knots.We are not the same as Israel. We have our interests. Israel has its own. What if Israel attacks Iran first in an attempt to knock out its nuclear programme and Iran counterattacks? After all, Israeli government ministers have threatened a pre-emptive attack on Iran. In the event of such an assault, is Clinton then bound to retaliate massively against Iran though Israel was the aggressor? You can see where this is going, and it isn't any place good.
And I neglected to mention this earlier, but Clinton's position here is literally identical to the one outlined last week by WaPo's resident neo-conservative, Charles Krauthammer
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