Nouri al-Maliki appears close to a deal that will put Iraq's Shi'ia parties in power. After seven months of political wrangling, it would be tempting to believe that any government formed by Iraq's squabbling political leaders is progress. It is not.

The political slate that garnered the most seats in the parliamentary elections, Ayad Allawi's non-sectarian bloc, ought to have had the first shot at forming a government. Prime Minister Maliki's manipulations of electoral commission findings and superseding of judicial decisions accrued that advantage instead to his second-place finish.

Even with the advantages of incumbency in a system newly empowered and without strong legal constraints, Maliki has been unable to cobble together a coalition. Other parties fear a "soft coup" of Maliki consolidating power and have been unwilling to join a government with him as prime minister.

Read on

By coincidence, I happened to read two stories back-to-back: the Iranian regime is apparently dangling offers to help us in Afghanistan; and Secretary Robert Gates thinks the proliferation-related sanctions are hurting Iran more than expected. My reading them back-to-back may be a coincidence, but I suspect the stories are related in a fundamental way.

David Ignatius notes one way the stories are related: Skeptics will argue against grasping the Iranian dangle for fear that would "dilute the main focus of Iran policy, which is stopping Tehran's pursuit of nuclear weapons." He claims that similar fears derailed an earlier potentially fruitful collaboration with Iran on Iraq in 2006, and he hopes the Obama administration won't make the same "mistake." To bolster his case, he cites "hardliners" in Tehran who exploited the abortive diplomatic maneuvers in 2006 to discredit the United States as a negotiating partner.  

But I don't find Ignatius's reasoning very persuasive because he avoids addressing the most obvious connection. Perhaps Iran is dangling these offers now precisely so as to disrupt the sanctions. Consider the similarities in the pattern. The earlier Iranian dangle came when a) the situation in Iraq was unraveling so U.S. local leverage was eroding but b) after a long period of paralysis there was finally modest progress on the nuclear file with credible threats of tighter sanctions on Iran and even rumors of more serious military action. In such a climate, shifting the diplomatic focus from terrain where Iranian leverage was weakening to terrain where it was strengthening made a lot of sense -- for the Iranian regime.

The current Iranian dangle comes when a) the situation in Afghanistan is dodgy (and probably some within the Obama camp even fear it is unraveling) but b) after a long period of paralysis there is finally modest progress on the nuclear file with increased sanctions inflicting noticeable pain on the Iranian regime and even rumors of more serious military action. In such a climate, shifting the diplomatic focus from terrain where Iranian leverage is weakening to terrain where it is strengthening makes a lot of sense -- for the Iranian regime.

It only makes sense to take up the Iranian dangle on Afghanistan if we can do so without relaxing pressure on the nuclear file. If, as Ignatius and other optimists assert, the Iranians are doing this out of a sincere desire to help stabilize the situation in Afghanistan, we should be able to explore that without relaxing nuclear-related sanctions. Indeed, the sanctions might even improve our leverage leading to more fruitful cooperation. If Iranians set as preconditions for talks on Afghanistan some sort of relaxation of the economic pressure -- or if our allies on their own relax the economic pressure so as to "help" negotiations on Afghanistan -- then the bargain is a bad one for U.S. foreign policy.  

There was a brief window when the Iranian regime actually was helpful on Afghanistan -- during the early post-9/11 window when the Iranian regime was afraid, with some justification, that the United States had an unchecked arsenal of military options at its disposal and was in the mood to wield them. During that period, many previously problematic regimes (Iran, Libya, Sudan) got "on side" with the United States, albeit temporarily or provisionally in some cases. Once the difficulties in Iraq undermined U.S. leverage, however, the incentives for cooperation shifted and the Iranian regime returned to its more common pattern of doing everything it could to frustrate U.S. foreign policy objectives in every arena.

The best way to break that pattern is with smart diplomacy. Smart diplomacy begins with a robust pressure track and builds other components -- direct talks, regional talks, and other carrots -- on that foundation. So let's not take the dangle on Afghanistan until we have locked in the sanctions and have corralled all of our allies in that effort. Once we have, it would be worth exploring other diplomatic avenues, but not before.

The ceremony on Saturday marking the beginning of the fueling of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor was preceded by much commentary about the implications of the move for Iran’s nuclear program and international efforts to halt Iran’s steady progress toward a nuclear weapon.

Under construction for decades, it was only a matter of time before Bushehr went live, especially after the Bush administration agreed in 2007 not to object to the project, hoping that a Russian-fueled Iranian reactor producing electricity would obviate Iran’s claimed need for indigenous production of nuclear fuel.

While Bushehr could eventually produce plutonium that Iran could use in a nuclear weapon, this would be a different path to a weapon than the uranium enrichment route that Tehran has thus far pursued. Plus, under Moscow’s agreement with Tehran, Russia will retain the spent fuel, which will be transported back to Russia. All aspects of the reactor’s operations, including the fuel, will be under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. 

These arrangements, are of course not completely foolproof, but are about as close as it gets. Even if Iran wanted a confrontation, and kicked out the Russians and IAEA from Bushehr, Iran does not appear to possess the reprocessing technology required to produce weapons grade plutonium from the spent fuel. Regardless, an international confrontation of this sort would be a green light for Israeli or perhaps even U.S. military action, an action one would assume the Iranians would not risk.

Another concern cited by critics is that now that the reactor is operational, any military action taken against the facility becomes much more difficult given the likelihood of a Chernobyl-style dispersion of radiation. Given the reported continuing Russian presence at the site, military action already is already unlikely, given that the last thing Israel would likely want to do is kill Russian scientists and technicians that are working on a project that has been blessed by successive U.S. administrations of both political parties. Also, if Israel or the United States became convinced that Bushehr was being used as part of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, it is likely that either country could find a suitable way to disable the reactor without contaminating a large geographic area.

Despite the fact that Bushehr thus fails to meet the hype swirling around the weekend’s events, there are several lessons to be learned from the plant going online.

Read on

Is the "China Fantasy" starting to get deflated by reality? Three years ago, Jim Mann's provocative book of that title identified the "China Fantasy" as the dogmatic belief of many Western political and commercial elites that China's economic liberalization and growth would lead inevitably to democracy at home and responsible conduct abroad. The operative word was "inevitably" -- the assumption being that China's remarkable economic success would automatically produce a middle class that demanded greater political rights, and that China's growing integration with the global economy would produce benign and responsible international behavior. Based on this assumption, the corollary policy prescription for the West was to pursue a policy of engagement and encouragement towards China's rise.

This paradigm seems to be shifting. I recently participated in a conference in Europe on China, attended by a cross-section of policy, academic, and commercial leaders from Europe, the United States, and China, and came away struck by palpable attitude changes in at least three dimensions. Taken together, these are signposts that the previous conventional wisdom on China is coming under question:

• European attitudes. Many of the Europeans present voiced a pronounced skepticism towards China, both for the Chinese Communist Party's ongoing refusal to liberalize the political system as well as for what they perceive as China's irresponsible international posture. Various reasons were suggested for this change in European attitudes from even two years ago, but the most salient one seems to be European ire over China's obstreperous conduct at last year's Copenhagen climate change conference. If Europe has a litmus test for international good citizenship, it is climate change. But China's behavior on that front seems to be prompting increased European frustration with China on other issues as well, including human rights, Iran's nuclear program, and China's military build-up.
• Business attitudes. American and European business leaders with extensive China experience also expressed significant disillusionment. As one noted, whereas 5 or 10 years ago the business community was virtually unanimous in its enthusiasm for the China market and in support of closer political ties between China and the West, now the consensus is fractured. Causes for this disenchantment include widespread corruption, intellectual property rights violations, the protectionism of the new "indigenous innovation" policy, and the general restraints on private sector flourishing imposed by China's state capitalism model.  To be sure, many multinational companies remain profitably invested in what is still the world's largest emerging market, and many more are eager to get in. But Google's recent exit from China may not be the only one, and some multinationals looking at China are weighing a new set of cost-benefit analyses.
• Chinese attitudes. If assessments in the West are changing, so are elite Chinese attitudes. Most of the Chinese participants were from universities or think-tanks (i.e. not People's Liberation Army hard-liners), but even they displayed a nationalistic confidence and rather defiant posture towards the West, especially the United States. At its most benign, this is an understandable attitude of a proud rising power. But in too many ways it is not benign, especially considering that the Chinese participants took worrisome stances on issues such as human rights, Taiwan, Tibet, mercantilist nationalism, Iran's nuclear program, shielding North Korea, and especially the security "threat" purportedly posed by the United States.     

The erosion of the "China fantasy" does not mark from a precise date, but a watershed moment ironically may have been the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Anticipated as China's grand arrival on the global stage, the Olympics were by many measures a major success -- and not just for people named "Michael Phelps." Yet surrounding the Olympics were constant reminders of Beijing's authoritarianism, whether the petulant rhetorical attacks on Tibet supporters, the draconian efforts at pollution reduction, the omnipresent surveillance, and the tight control on any voices of dissent. Put it this way -- as obnoxious are those %&*!@ vuvuzelas at the World Cup, they are also the sound of a free society.  You can bet they would have been banned in Beijing.

The end of the "China fantasy" does not necessarily prescribe a wholesale shift in the free world's posture towards China -- just a more realistic one. For the United States, this has several policy implications:

• Remember that "engagement" doesn't just apply to the government to government relationship with Beijing, but also to the people of China. A forward-looking China policy must include increased support for the seeds of civil society in China -- especially young entrepreneurs, religious leaders, human rights activists, students and scholars. Much more than the CCP, they are the best hope for the future of China.
• Keep cultivating our alliance partners in Asia, and also build ties with emerging powers. Nations as diverse as Australia, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, South Korea, Singapore, and India have two things in common: they are wary of China's aspirations to regional hegemony, and they desire closer ties with the United States. 
• Strengthen our defense capabilities to deter China's emergence as a viable peer competitor. The problem with China's military build-up is not just that it is non-transparent, but that much of it seems designed specifically to counter American force projection and capabilities. For the United States, this means everything from improved cyber-security, command and control system protection, and anti-ship missile defense to, yes, a sufficient F-22 force to preserve air superiority.
• Get our debt under control. Not that the United States needs yet another reason to tackle its mind-blowing $13 trillion debt, but the fact that China owns close to $1 trillion of it is a further concern. The debate will continue over whether this debt financing imbalance actually leaves China or the United States more vulnerable in the aggregate (see this Dan Drezner article for a thoughtful analysis), but at a minimum it is a strategic constraint on the United States.

None of this precludes continued bilateral cooperation with China on important issues, or continued support for sound investment in such a vast market. The "China fantasy" was based more on hope than experience, but the benefit of recent experiences with state capitalism is the chance to replace hope with prudence.   

Supporters of the Obama administration's "reset" policy toward Russia tout the New START Treaty, Russian support for sanctions against Iran, transit for Afghanistan across Russian territory, and cooperation in dealing with North Korea and non-proliferation more broadly as the fruits of its success. National Security Advisor Jim Jones cites the reset as one of the main successes in the administration's foreign policy (that, to some, says a lot about its overall foreign policy). There is no denying the vastly improved tone and rapport between the American and Russian presidents compared to the end of the Bush-Putin days. But before people get too carried away, let's focus on two recent developments that remind us of the challenges we face in dealing with Russia. 

On May 31, Russian authorities brutally broke up opposition protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg and arrested more than 100 people. A journalist participating in the protest suffered a severely broken arm at the hands of the police. The U.S. National Security Council spokesman issued a statement expressing "regret" at the detention of peaceful protestors ("condemn" would have been a more appropriate verb -- we "regret," for example, the recent death of Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky). While violent suppression of demonstrations is nothing new for Russian authorities, what makes this latest example noteworthy is that it happened just days after an American delegation went to Russia for the second round of the Civil Society Working Group co-chaired by NSC Senior Director Mike McFaul and Deputy Head of the Russian Presidential Administration Vladislav Surkov. 

When this working group was first announced last July during President Obama's visit to Moscow, I argued that having Surkov as the chair was comparable to putting Chechnya's brutal leader Ramzan Kadyrov in charge of a working group on stabilizing the North Caucasus. The choice of Surkov, the brains behind "sovereign democracy" (the concept that justifies the regime's crackdown on political opponents) was widely condemned by Russian human rights activists who wrote to Medvedev urging that he be removed from this working group.  The U.S. side argued that it had no veto authority over the choice of Russian co-chairs of the various bilateral working groups, but in this case, it would have been better to have nixed the civil society working group than to have had Surkov leading it. 

Read on

The Obama administration is talking tough on Iran. Despite allowing the Iranian government to escape sanction for a year of not accepting sugar-coated Western deadlines to abandon their nuclear program, and doing nothing about discovery of another nuclear plant at Qom, Team Obama is suddenly making an awful lot of noise.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's memo requesting White House guidance to further defense planning leaks, characterized as a wake up call for identifying military activity that could be taken against Iran. The national security advisor rebuts the characterization as a routine part of their 15 months of activity "successfully building a coalition of nations to isolate Iran and pressure it to live up to its obligations." Secretary Gates personally reinforces that view. Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes (i.e., Presidential speechwriter -- since when did they become commentators of record on military options?) gets sent out to mop up any misunderstandings the hapless Jim Jones might have left. Admiral Mullen's Chairman's Guidance is revealed to task planning for "limited results" strikes on Iran. A prominent scientist who defected is publicly identified (picture in the newspaper) as an intelligence coup. The director of national intelligence publicly explains the national intelligence estimate on Iran has been delayed these six months because we suddenly have enormous streams on intelligence coming to us from disgruntled Iranian "technocrats." When the undersecretary of defense for policy tells a conference in Singapore military options are "not on the table in the near term," the secretary of defense personally refutes her statement. A senior administration official states the United States will not allow Iran to even acquire a "weapons capability," much less a weapon. Secretary Gates publicly questions whether it is possible to verify the difference between capability and weapon, suggesting the administration's threshold for action is actually more restrictive than Iran crossing the nuclear threshold.

And yet it is patently clear that destroying the Iranian nuclear program is not on the table for the Obama administration. All the hubbub has the feel of an orchestrated attempt to look like Washington is doing something when Washington is doing nothing -- they are covering their retreat into a policy of containing a nuclear-armed Iran. I hope I'm wrong, but it would appear the Obama administration wants very much to look like the pincers of their strategy are closing in on Iran precisely because they have taken military force off the table, can't get the "crippling sanctions" Secretary Clinton trumpeted, and just held a summit meeting on nuclear proliferation that said nothing about Iran or North Korea's nuclear programs.

Read on

This week's bad news on nuclear proliferation far outweighed the pleasant production values surrounding the Washington Nuclear Security Summit. But let's look at the good news first.

Representatives of 47 nations declared this week that nuclear terrorism is a bad possibility. They issued a communiqué to that effect and provided a non-binding work plan to counter "one of the most challenging threats to international security," as the communiqué characterized it. The White House blog was stronger, calling nuclear terrorism "the most dire threat of our time." The fact that the administration recognizes this is very welcome.

But such declarations are not new. The United States saw the problem immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union and, under President Clinton, worked with Russia to safeguard nuclear material. The United Nations recognized the danger and in 2005 adopted by consensus the Convention for the Suppression of the Acts of Nuclear Terrorism. That extensive set of measures entered into force in 2007 and, by the end of last year, had been ratified and agreed by 59 nations, more than attended this summit. Both this week's communiqué and work plan recall that convention and call for its implementation.

Nothing in the work plan is binding beyond agreement to meet again in South Korea in 2012. The tentative wording of the plan often betrays its own ineffectual outcome. For example, it says:

Participating States encourage nuclear operators and architect/engineering firms to take into account and incorporate, where appropriate [emphasis added], effective measures of physical protection and security culture into the planning, construction, and operation of civilian nuclear facilities and provide technical assistance, upon request, to other States in doing so."

Is there somewhere it would be inappropriate to incorporate physical protection and safety culture into nuclear facilities? But at least the participants were able to agree that, for the most part, this is a good idea.

The other outcomes of the summit -- reiteration of a 2000 agreement between the United States and Russia on plutonium disposal, a fuzzy but positive step forward on Ukraine's disposal of nuclear materials, closure of a Russian nuclear facility that ceased production last year -- were all useful. They are, however, unlikely to achieve any real reduction in the risk of proliferation and nuclear terrorism.

Read on

In its most recent report, the IAEA acknowledged what many observers have asserted for years -- that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon. Whether this is the result of new evidence, or merely the willingness of the agency’s new director-general to heed the existing evidence, is beside the point. The findings will provide new impetus for a sanctions push that has been extensively foreshadowed over the last several months by leaders in the United States and Europe.

For the next tranche of sanctions to be successful, thought must be given not only to which measures are chosen, but how they are chosen. The instinct of policymakers in Europe and Washington is often to act incrementally; stronger sanctions are proposed, only to be diluted in U.N. negotiations aimed at unanimity. The measures that are ultimately adopted are usually just one step beyond the previous set.

This incremental approach is counterproductive. The sanctions’ predictability and long lead time allows Tehran to prepare for them in advance. For example, Iran is currently expanding its oil refining capacity and reducing consumption subsidies in anticipation of the sort of gasoline sanctions moving through Congress, and could be a net gasoline exporter by 2013. Incrementalism inures the Iranian regime to sanctions altogether, stripping of credibility any threats of tougher action in the future. The result is to rob sanctions of their deterrent effect and make extreme outcomes -- a nuclear-armed Iran, or war with Iran -- more rather than less likely.

The traditional approach also places too high a value on international consensus. While multilateral support is necessary to efforts to deter Iran, unanimity is not. Unanimity does not make weak sanctions more effective. Also, the unanimity achieved is often symbolic -- lowest-common denominator measures are supplemented by a “coalition of the willing” who shoulder greater sacrifice while others enthusiastically embrace whatever is not explicitly forbidden. For example, China National Petroleum Corporation (having taken the place of France’s Total SA) will begin the drilling phase of a major gas project in Iran in March, at the same moment the rest of the P5+1 begin their deliberations on sanctions. In this next round of sanctions deliberations, the price required of Beijing for its seat at the head diplomatic table must be that it accept its fair share of the responsibility for and cost of deterring Iran.

To avoid the trap of incrementalism and advance efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons progress, the U.S. and Europe must think backwards. That is, consider what circumstances must be brought about to induce a change of course by the Iranian regime, along with the time available to bring about such circumstances. A cursory analysis of past Iranian shifts suggests that the threshold at which the regime will recalculate remains far off -- Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1988 decision to accede to a ceasefire in the Iran-Iraq war, for example, came only after several Iranian naval ships were destroyed in battle with the U.S. Navy.

Thinking backwards leads to the conclusion that the regime’s resilience, and the urgency underscored by the IAEA report, should lead the West to eschew any gradual buildup of pressure for bolder, less predictable, and faster-acting measures. By implication, our international persuasion efforts should be focused less on means -- such as sanctions -- and more on ends. If an ally agrees that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, that its success in this regard would be devastating for global security, and that sufficient pressure must be brought to bear on the Iranian regime to force its recalculation, then reasoning backward will lead naturally support for far-reaching sanctions or similar measures. If on the other hand there is no such concurrence on objectives, then agreement on “crippling” sanctions is unlikely ever to materialize.

It is possible that a bolder approach to sanctions will signal to a skeptical Iranian regime that we are willing to endure much to derail its nuclear ambitions, and induce its leader to preemptively change his strategy. More ominously, a failure by the regime to do so may lead the international community to realize that no sanctions will be sufficient to divert Iran from its path.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the surprising assertion yesterday in Doha that an Iranian nuclear weapon would not directly threaten the United States:

“[P]art of the goal -- not the only goal, but part of the goal -- that we were pursuing was to try to influence the Iranian decision regarding whether or not to pursue a nuclear weapon. And, as I said in my speech, you know, the evidence is accumulating that that's exactly what they are trying to do, which is deeply concerning, because it doesn't directly threaten the United States, but it directly threatens a lot of our friends, allies, and partners here in this region and beyond.”

Secretary Clinton is surely correct about the threat faced by U.S. allies in the region, but her assessment of the potential threat to the U.S. does not comport with the evidence on Iran’s ballistic missile programs. Many U.S. facilities and thousands of American personnel are of course already within range of Iran’s short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, which Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair recently testified (pdf) are “inherently capable of delivering WMD.”

Furthermore, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency reported (pdf) this month that “Iran continue[s] to develop long-range ballistic missiles that will be threatening to the United States,” and the U.S. intelligence community has judged in the past that Iran may test an ICBM by 2015 (see here [pdf] for a full discussion of this issue). Iran last year demonstrated progress by successfully placing a satellite into orbit. At that time, the State Department spokesman issued a statement of “deep concern,” noting:

“Recently, Iran's development of a space launch vehicle (SLV) capable of putting a satellite into orbit establishes the technical basis from which Iran could develop long-range ballistic missile systems. Many of the technological building blocks involved in SLVs are the same as those required to develop long-range ballistic missiles.”

The Pentagon spokesman also noted the U.S. concerns over the development:

“It is certainly a reason for us to be concerned about Iran and its continued attempts to develop a ballistic missile program of increasingly long range. Although this would appear just to be the launch of a satellite, their first, obviously there are dual-use capabilities in the technology here which could be applied toward the development of a long-range ballistic missile.”

The spokesmen’s concerns were well-founded. Given the available facts, it is difficult to support the view that an Iranian nuclear weapon would not pose a direct threat to the United States.

Doves keep talking about the Iranian nuclear problem like it is a unilateralist Ungame, the game where you win by not seeking to win. It is better thought of as multilateralist chess.  

Doves have argued that the primary obstacle to reaching a grand bargain with Iran has been the unwillingness of the United States to make a sufficiently generous offer. Doves believed that President Bush willfully ignored hopeful signs out of Iran and poisoned the well of negotiations by setting "unreasonable" conditions, for instance requiring that Iran pause its enrichment program while negotiating over the issue. Doves were encouraged by Obama's campaign critique of Bush on Iran and especially by his promise to sit down face-to-face with Iranian leaders to hammer out a deal. Doves take a unilateralist approach to the international coalition, focusing almost exclusively on U.S. concessions as the engine of their strategy. The dove position is remarkably immune to bad news out of Tehran. Whenever the Iranian regime spurns a U.S. offer, the problem can be pinpointed in the alleged unfairness of the offer -- unfair to Iran, that is. Be more generous, and the Iranians might play along. Whenever the Iranians are caught in a deceit, the doves propose a bold gambit of making further concessions to Iran as a way to capitalize on the momentum. Pushed to its logical conclusion, the dove position is an irrefutable tautology: If we are willing to live with an Iranian nuclear weapon, and we should be, then we can have a grand bargain with Iran and we can put this matter behind us. Like the Ungame, we only need to focus on moving our pieces and listening to others. Provided we don't really care about "winning," then the game is really quite simple.

If you do care about winning, where winning is defined as "Iran abandons its nuclear weapons program," then the game is better viewed as multilateral chess -- strategic interaction along several vectors with multiple players holding conflicting interests.

The most obvious vector is with Iran, which wants to keep its nuclear weapons program and wants all sorts of other goodies including keeping its support for global terrorism, gaining greater access to global markets, establishing a hegemonic position in the region, preserving regime stability, and so on. Our challenge is to set Iran's various desiderata in opposition with each other, raising the costs of the ones contrary to our interests and enhancing the benefits of the ones consonant with our interests, thereby inducing Iran into making compromises we can live with. 

The only way we can do this, however, is by pursuing robust diplomacy, meaning credible offers of carrots simultaneous with imposition of sticks (what diplomats call the "pressure track"). By sticks, I mean non-military pressure, specifically multilateral economic sanctions; such sticks, by the way, are double-edged because they can also count as carrots -- "make a deal with us and we will lift the sanction." The sticks tweak the costs, the carrots tweak the benefits. If applied in sufficient measure, the strategic calculus might be influenced and a deal might be struck. However, our ability to influence the regime's strategic calculus depends heavily on the sticks side of the business and almost all of the sticks remaining to be played depend on the cooperation of others. This is why President Bush pursued a multilateral approach to Iran for many years, and for which he received considerable partisan abuse. Which brings us to the other vectors.

The next most important vector is with our European allies, who fervently want Iran to abandon its nuclear program and almost as fervently want the United States to shoulder the lion's share of the costs of achieving that goal. For a while, the Europeans embraced a good cop, bad cop approach (guess which role they wanted to play). For the last several years, however, the Europeans have leaned a bit further forward in favor of imposing sticks, but have insisted that they cannot do so without successive waves of authorizing U.N. Security Council resolutions. Which brings us to the next vector.

Additional Security Council resolutions can only be achieved with the cooperation of the Russians and the Chinese, who have a different conflict of interest with us. Neither particularly wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons, but both want all of the costs of preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon to fall upon the United States and our European allies. The ideal situation from the Russian/Chinese point of view is a final deal which Iran accepts but which permanently orients Iran towards Russia-China outreach rather than towards the West. This conflict of interests is so profound it is almost irreconcilable except for one vital point: Russia and China want least of all a situation in which a nuclear negotiation deadlock collapses into military conflict. The challenge, therefore, is to convince the Russians and the Chinese that if they cooperate in imposing multilateral pressure on Iran, thus giving diplomacy a chance, they can help forestall a resort to force; but if they do not, they increase the likelihood of a U.S. (or an Israeli) resort to force. Hence the need to keep the military option on the table while also demonstrating a credible desire for a non-military solution. Structured this way, Russian and Chinese cooperation buy a peaceful resolution and Russian and Chinese free-riding hastens an undesirable military outcome. (Note, substitute Europe for Russia and China in the preceding sentences and you have a fair description of our challenge in 2005-2006.  The Europeans have moved closer to the United States since then, in part through the deft diplomacy of the Bush and then Obama Administrations, and in part through the daft diplomacy of the Iranians.)

This multilateral chess game is so daunting that the failure of the Obama team (and before them the Bush team) to win it is hardly an indication of strategic incompetence. But there have been avoidable missteps. The Bush team made a bold offer to Iran in May 2006, but did not maximize the leverage from that offer with sufficiently dramatic and concurrent steps, such as a major Presidential speech and letter directed over the heads of the regime and to the Iranian people, posting the details of the offer so the world (and critics) could see how generous it was, and seeking a simultaneous increase in economic pressure deferring instead to the European request to try out the carrots before imposing additional sticks. The Obama team fixed the publicity mistake, but repeated the mistake of first-carrots-then-sticks sequencing. They also added some mistakes of their own. The Obama team was slow to capitalize on the domestic turmoil inside Iran after the widespread election fraud. The failure to wield this pressure lever has caused even erstwhile doves to shift to a more hawkish position. An even more profound misstep -- and one that has garnered far less attention -- was the decision to treat sticks as an alternative to diplomacy rather than acknowledging that they are a crucial component that makes diplomacy work.  As a result, they have delayed the sticks far past the time when they could have maximum effect. Thus, Obama played an ace card in September -- the evidence that the Iranian regime had systematically deceived the IAEA on a uranium enrichment program -- but did not push for sticks at that time. Each self-declared declared deadline was missed, and each promised response was further delayed. Now we are well into 2010 and the pressure track is barely further advanced from where it was 6 months ago.

I was never very optimistic that the Iranian nuclear saga would end well. I am a bit less optimistic today. The best hope for success now appears to be with the Iranian people. If they seize the moment to change the trajectory of Iran, they could fundamentally alter the calculations of the Iranian regime. Tomorrow, on the 31st anniversary of the last time the Iranian people dramatically changed the trajectory of their country, we will get a sense of how likely that is.

As we witnessed recently with the questioning of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair by the Chilcot inquiry, the debate over the war in Iraq is one that raises many issues and can be expected to continue for some time to come. But one issue, raised by my fellow FP blogger, Tom Ricks in a recent post, deserves some critical attention here: his contention that removing Saddam Hussein from power strengthened Iran by removing an Iraqi "bulwark" against Persian expansionism. 

Ricks' assertion is one that is oft-repeated but fundamentally mistaken. It is over-charitable to Saddam, who -- having invaded Kuwait, threatened Saudi Arabia, and harshly repressed Iraqis -- was no protector of his neighbors. And it is unfair to the current government of Iraq, which is not a client of Tehran's or passive in the face of Iranian bellicosity.

More importantly, however, the notion that our approach to regional security should be based on supporting a regime like Saddam's as a foil to Tehran should be rejected. We can pursue other more effective and more palatable means of countering Iran's threats, and indeed are pursuing them, as recent reporting in the Washington Post and elsewhere bears witness. In this regard, the Obama administration should hold firm on two important objectives. First, success in Iraq: one of the most potent blows to the Iranian regime, currently struggling against its own loss of legitimacy domestically, would be the emergence of a pluralistic and prosperous democracy in Shia-majority Iraq. Second, an unwavering policy of prevention toward Iran: that is, stressing that we remain determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, rather than resigned to their doing so and focused instead on future "containment."

In one respect, however, Ricks is correct -- the Iranian regime's pursuit of nuclear weapons and support for terrorism pose a threat to the entire region, and countries of the region would be wise to work cooperatively to counter this threat. One of the trickiest issues in the way of a sustainable Israeli-Palestinian peace is security; to date, the perceived zero-sum tradeoff between Israeli security and Palestinian sovereignty has proven unmanageable. The convergence in recent decades of threat perceptions in the region offers the opportunity for mutually beneficial approaches to the security issue which should not be neglected. Looking forward, it is such regional cooperation that will form the real "bulwark" against emerging threats, whether from Iran, terrorist networks, or elsewhere.

President Obama starts 2010 with a crowded agenda for his second year in office. His greatest challenge this year will be turning his rhetoric about a world free of nuclear weapons into reality. 

Despite having spent much of 2009 pursuing a follow-up agreement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), Obama has little to show for his abandonment of U.S. missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic and other steps taken as part of his "reset" of the U.S.-Russian relationship. Instead, Russia has drawn out negotiations on a treaty that President Obama said in July 2009 "would be completed this year." Even if he and his Russian counterpart wrap up an agreement in the coming months, its fate in the Senate remains uncertain. In addition to his problems reaching a follow-up to START, Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) does not appear imminent. Posing perhaps the greatest challenge to the president's disarmament agenda in 2010 will be the actions of Iran and North Korea. Obama has bolstered his disarmament agenda by arguing that U.S. nuclear reductions and ratification of treaties like the CTBT will somehow convince Iran and North Korea to forgo their nuclear ambitions. In reality, Iran may go nuclear in the near future, setting off a wave of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. North Korea has rebuffed all Obama administration attempts to lure it back to the negotiating table and may be proliferating its nuclear wares to other rogue regimes. 

President Obama spent 2009 talking about disarmament and pursuing engagement with rogue regimes. If he wants to rescue his disarmament agenda in 2010, he should focus less on the supposed threat posed by the U.S. nuclear deterrent and more on the real problem -- the regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang.

By Michael Singh

As engagement with Iran gained political momentum in the United States during the 2008 presidential campaign, some of its advocates were quick to cite the analogy of Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China in portraying outreach to Tehran as a similarly bold policy stroke. The experience of the past year, which has seen Iran's leaders crack down at home and spurn outreach from the West, has exposed the superficiality of this comparison. As political scientist Michael Mandelbaum has observed, Chairman Mao was motivated, after all, not by American charm but by Soviet belligerence. China in the early 1970s had recently lost a border war to the USSR and faced a Soviet army massing on its border, pushing it into Washington's arms. The Iranian regime, on the other hand, has been eager to keep America at arm's length.

With negotiations with Iran making frustratingly little progress and hopes for strong international sanctions restrained by the reality of Chinese and Russian reluctance, a new analogy is gaining traction in U.S. national security circles -- containment. Its enthusiasts liken America's Cold War containment of the Soviet Union to the hypothetical containment of a nuclear Iran in the future. Just like the Nixon-to-China comparison, however, the containment analogy is fatally flawed.

Those who argue in favor of containment generally have in mind nuclear deterrence -- that is, preventing Iran from actually using a nuclear weapon. And history suggests that they have a point -- no nuclear power besides the United States has ever employed the bomb, and a combination of missile defenses and a declaratory policy promising retaliation could prove powerful deterrents to Iran doing so. While we should not count too heavily on the Iranian regime's rationality -- its officials have, after all, mused about destroying Israel -- neither should we exaggerate the likelihood that Iran would initiate a nuclear conflict that would prove its own demise.

The possibility that it would use a nuclear weapon is, however, only the beginning of the dangers that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose. Of perhaps greater concern is that Iran would transfer its nuclear know-how to other countries or, far more alarming, to terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. This scenario is not far-fetched -- nuclear powers have regularly transferred their technology to others, and Iran in particular has been generous in sharing advanced military hardware with its proxies, like the advanced rocketry employed by Hezbollah against Israel or IEDs used by Iraqi insurgents against American troops. Even if they were denied the ultimate weapons by Tehran, these groups would surely feel emboldened under its nuclear umbrella to step up their activities against Western and Arab interests.

Added to this danger is the likelihood that Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons would fundamentally change the security landscape in the Middle East. Iran's neighbors would be faced with a grim choice -- pursue a nuclear weapons capability of their own, or resign themselves to Iranian hegemony for the foreseeable future. Given their longstanding mistrust of Tehran, it is likely that those which could pursue the nuclear path would do so. Such a development would leave the United States not simply to contain a nuclear-armed Iran, but to manage a broadly nuclearized Middle East and its implications for the already-shaky global nonproliferation regime. These are threats against which even the most advanced missile defense or the strongest declaratory policy afford no protection.

The victory of the United States and its allies over the Soviet Union was a historic success, but not an unqualified one, and certainly not a costless one. The containment of the Soviets required massive overseas military deployments and two major military conflicts. While the USSR did not use nuclear weapons, it transferred nuclear technology to other states, the consequences of which trouble us greatly to this day. What's more, the United States and Western Europe were left with little recourse as the Eastern bloc fell under Soviet sway and human rights and economic progress were stamped out for five decades.

This is not the sort of success we should hope for against Iran. As the Obama administration weighs how best to respond to Iran's continued nuclear defiance and its repression of a courageous opposition, "containment" should be crossed off the list of policy options.

By Will Inboden

President Obama deserves our support for his wise and courageous decision on America's Afghanistan policy. Embracing the counterinsurgency strategy recommended by Generals McChrystal and Petraeus and its corresponding substantial military force increase of 30,000 troops was a laudable act of principle, especially considering the tepid support among the general American public and the outright opposition of most Democrats. As Peter Feaver and many others have observed, Obama's speech itself was rather anemic and an inartful reminder of the political calculations and ambivalence which color his national security policy as he continues to grapple with embracing his role as a wartime president. But when it came to the hard crucible of making the decision, in this vital case he did the right thing.

There are many others who can comment on the details of the new policy and what it might mean for Afghanistan. But almost as important is how the rest of the world will perceive the new policy. In a column last week, Roger Cohen cited an observation by Henry Kissinger that "[Obama] reminds me of a chess grandmaster who has played his opening in six simultaneous games. But he hasn't completed a single game and I'd like to see him finish one." 

While the Afghanistan board is far from complete, in this case the President has made an audacious new move. To pick up on the Kissinger chessboard analogy (and to invoke a favorite geopolitical theme of Kissinger's), the six games are not being played separately but rather are all linked to each other. A move on one board often will carry significant ramifications for the state of play on the other boards, and will send important signals to the opposing players on each board.    

So what are the messages that Obama's speech sends to other important parts of the world, including ones where he has taken new steps?

To the nations of western Europe, the new policy shows a willingness to try to lead public opinion (and not just follow it) for a mission vital to national security, and to make a substantial troop deployment committed to taking the fight to the enemy. In light of the unwillingness thus far of many NATO members to increase their force deployments in Afghanistan, and the reluctance of some to even let their troops engage in combat, this is significant. Since European public opinion still remains largely opposed to the war in Afghanistan but the new strategy calls for another 5,000 NATO troops, President Obama might want to consider deploying his own considerable popularity by making a similar speech in Europe urging more force contributions from NATO members. Perhaps when he travels to Oslo next week to accept his Nobel Peace Prize?

To China, where in the wake of Obama's recent trip the government in Beijing may be questioning his general resolve, the new policy demonstrates an ability to make hard choices that risk his reputation and carry real costs. It also reinforces for Beijing that south and central Asia remain regions of profound strategic interest to the United States. These will be helpful reminders for China as the Obama Administration continues to press it to play a constructive role on other priority issues such as the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs.

To Iran, where the Obama administration faces an acute challenge on the nuclear program, the policy demonstrates a willingness to use force if necessary to protect America's security interests. Ironically, it is sometimes just this type of willingness that strengthens diplomatic efforts and renders the use of force itself unnecessary.

To India (from where I write this week), the policy displays a renewed commitment to an American presence in a troubled region, and to finishing hard tasks. But as numerous Indian policy leaders privately said today, the announced date of July 2011 to begin troop withdrawals undercuts this message and renews fears of American fickleness, of the type that led to American disengagement from Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1990s, with disastrous results. David Ignatius today called this "the weak link in an otherwise admirable decision -- the idea that we strengthen our hand by announcing in advance that we plan to fold it."

To Pakistan, the new policy will hopefully signal to government and citizens alike that the United States is committed to defeating the Taliban and al Qaeda and to the sustained promotion of stable, secure, and free self-government in the region. This should give Pakistanis the additional assurance and incentives they need to make the right choices to side against jihadism and with efforts for reform, development, and responsible governance. Though again, in Pakistani minds these incentives might be mitigated by fears of the July 2011 drawdown date and yet another case of U.S. abandonment. 

The hardest days in Afghanistan lie ahead, and the Obama administration will face grave challenges and choices in many other areas, some known and others unknown. But at this point at least, Obama has decided on a policy that is best for American security interests not only in Afghanistan but in other places around the globe.

Roger L. Wollenberg-Pool/Getty Images