Does Nuclear Diplomacy Actually Work?
Ambassador Jack Lew, writing in these pages, lays out a series of reasonable, compelling recommendations for how to repair the US-Israel relationship, and correctly diagnoses some of the internal political dynamics in both Israel and the US that have threatened to derail it. Both dynamics are, essentially, demographic in origin: a younger electorate in the US has grown up with an image of Israel as a Western-supported Goliath, having forgotten how Western-style armies (first German and then Soviet-supplied Arab forces) targeted a friendless Jewish people for extermination. Meanwhile, a younger electorate in Israel, having experienced firsthand twenty-five years of post-Oslo Palestinian intransigence and terror attacks, has grown increasingly right-wing, emboldening extremist elements in Netanyahu’s coalition.
Nevertheless, it is fair to question whether the ambassador was correct to close his important piece by stating that Israel must accept ‘that diplomatic engagement will be needed to prevent Iran from developing a military nuclear capability.’ Having served at the highest reaches of the Obama administration in the period when the JCPOA, seeking to prevent or at least delay Iran’s nuclear program via diplomatic engagement, was a top priority, it is unsurprising that Ambassador Lew should promote this view. But is it correct? Does diplomatic engagement alone to limit nuclear proliferation actually work? Or does only force, or the threat of it, prevent the spread of what the early nuclear theorist Bernard Brodie called ‘the ultimate weapon’?
Having begun his career as a foreign policy aide to congressional Democratic leadership during the closing years of the Cold War, Lew has seen successful nuclear diplomacy in action: the 1986 Reykjavik talks and subsequent INF treaty were uniquely effective in de-escalating nuclear tensions in Europe, by eliminating short- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles there. But the success of these talks was largely due to Gorbachev’s desire to reform the declining Soviet empire from within, by ratcheting down Cold War tensions. Only an underlying political thaw between the two powers allowed significant progress in arms control, after decades of more modest results, even as both sides maintained vast nuclear arsenals.
Arms control talks between global hegemons in a bi-polar world are, anyway, quite different from diplomatic efforts by established nuclear powers to limit the spread of nuclear capabilities to non-nuclear states determined to obtain them. Exhibit A is, perhaps, Israel itself. While never having officially ‘introduced’ nuclear weapons into the Middle East or acknowledged nuclear capabilities, declassified American documents and decades of academic research have recorded how the Israeli nuclear program was developed in concert with the French over the persistent objections and diplomatic efforts of the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Indeed, those same administrations had likewise discouraged France’s own nuclearization, unsuccessfully. These ineffectual interventions followed more notable failures to use diplomacy to discourage proliferation in the USSR and China. Only the UK, which after all itself initiated the research program that became the Manhattan Project, obtained a nuclear capability without vigorous American diplomatic efforts to dissuade it.
Having failed earlier in the Cold War, the American foreign policy establishment was more confident in the 1970’s that it would be able to use diplomatic leverage to discourage proliferation. This optimism was foiled yet again even by comparatively weak states in India and South Africa, which were the subjects of strong US pressure campaigns, even as they used American-provided civilian nuclear infrastructure (‘atoms for peace’) in their programs. Following India’s nuclearization, Pakistan also successfully overcame American diplomatic efforts to likewise procure its own bomb, establishing a program which has been notably successful in seeding other rogue initiatives.
Only in South Korea, Taiwan and West Germany did Western diplomacy ensure non-proliferation – but it is notable that each was existentially dependent on an American security umbrella. It is true that in this period Brazil and Argentina mutually agreed to step back from their nuclear pursuits, spurred by regional competition between their respective military governments, but they had pursued them over the complaints of the U.S., and as in the above cases had ignored the diplomatic efforts of nuclear incumbents, ceasing their programs only after civilian governments took power in both nations.
Having failed in its previous seven or so attempts to use diplomacy, the American foreign policy establishment gamely made an eighth attempt, when Ambassador Lew worked for the Clinton administration, vis a vis North Korea, when later Iran head negotiator Wendy Sherman was given this very remit. Unable to pursue a military solution, due to the missile blackmail threat against its neighbor, the dynamic which Operation Epic Fury precisely seeks to reverse, the U.S. was again unable to prevent North Korea from obtaining a nuclear program through the usual combination of stalling, bluffing, and secrecy, a combination which Iran has perfected over two decades of ineffectual talks. Taking that failed approach and applying it to Iran has been the modus operandi of every Democratic administration since, but there is no rational basis to believe it will actually work.
True, diplomacy was successful in eliminating Ukraine’s nuclear program, but Iran can see how that turned out for Ukraine, which like Kazakhstan and Belarus gave up its inherited Soviet nuclear capabilities, not least because they were too weak to resist both Russia and the Western powers on the nuclear issue, and anyway were not well-placed to maintain programs that were not homegrown. Meanwhile, actual force, or the threat of it, stopped the nuclear programs of Syria, Iraq, Libya and, up until now, Iran.
Ambassador Lew would have Israel exchange a policy that works for one that manifestly doesn’t. Simply put, there is not a single instance when a rogue nuclear state gave up its program due purely to diplomatic engagement. South Africa almost appears to be such an example, but in truth the denuclearization decision was driven partly by the end of the Angolan conflict and the Cold War, and partly by the apartheid regime’s unwillingness to hand over its arsenal to its African National Congress enemies.
This unblemished record of failure begs the question: is there perhaps an underlying reason why nuclear incumbents are unable to dissuade would-be entrants to the nuclear club through bargaining, economic sanctions, and technological embargoes alone? In classical nuclear theory, the obtaining of nuclear weapons always comes with a downside, because any efforts to increase one’s own security inevitably, especially in a nuclear context, trigger the threat perceptions of others, which then act to increase their sense of security, consequently impinging on your sense of safety. This dynamic was described by the Columbia scholar Robert Jervis as the ‘security dilemma’, suggesting that one can never obtain as much security as one would like, meaning that nuclear weapons are no guarantee of safety, only of survival. Nations entering upon the nuclear path, consequently, at the margin trade a sense of security for a guarantee of survival – one need only look at war-ravaged but intact Russia as an example. Meanwhile, Ukraine and Libya stand as examples of nations split asunder, due to their prior inability to stand up to nuclear incumbents. Which option can we expect the Islamic Republic to pursue?
The security dilemma suggests procurement of the ultimate weapon only makes sense when the survival of the state is in question. And in that context, what can diplomacy ever accomplish? One cannot, in the end, as the Jewish people know, trade survival for any bribe, favor, or freedom from sanction. Nor can the existential worries of the Islamic Republic ever be genuinely allayed, intent as it is on exporting revolution and Shiite ideology, dominating its Arab neighbors, contesting America and Americanism at every turn, and destroying the Zionist entity. Such measures invite countermeasures, which can inevitably threaten the survival of the regime. For any revisionist state, as Iran undoubtedly is, unhappiness with the current state of affairs leads to heightened threat perceptions at home and aggressiveness abroad, which even appeasement cannot assuage, since the ruling regime is unable to dial back its ambitions without losing legitimacy. This means that such a power, having embarked on the nuclear path, ultimately can only be diverted from it by force or regime change – precisely the (unspoken) aims of Operation Epic Fury.
