This Week at War: Could China Disarm Iran?

Here is the latest edition of my column at Foreign Policy:

Topics include:

1) Could a Chinese security guarantee end the standoff with Iran?

2) Hezbollah’s Scuds provide a test case for Obama’s deterrence doctrine.

Could a Chinese security guarantee end the standoff with Iran?

Perhaps the most important of the numerous sidebar meetings U.S. President Barack Obama held during his Nuclear Security Summit was with Chinese President Hu Jintao. At issue was how much support China would lend to a U.S. drive at the U.N. Security Council to sanction Iran for its lack of cooperation with inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). According to the Washington Post, China is still sticking with its noncommittal position.

According to the U.S. Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration, China is Iran’s no. 2 oil customer and Chinese companies are heavily invested in Iranian oil and gas exploration and development. China’s rapid growth in oil imports virtually guarantees that China’s commercial and political relations with Iran will deepen.

Proponents of a diplomatic “grand bargain” between Iran and the United States argue that the reason Iran is pursuing a nuclear-weapons capability is because it feels the need to deter a militarily supreme United States. Under a grand bargain, Iran would completely open itself to IAEA inspection in exchange for a U.S. renunciation of force against Iran, the restoration of diplomatic relations, and the end to the U.S. trade embargo.

The Obama administration has weakly proffered a vaguer version of this deal with little response from Iran. Iran’s leaders have likely concluded that a U.S. promise not to use force against Iran is meaningless because the United States could reverse it at any time. But if Washington cannot credibly guarantee Iran’s security, what about Beijing? Wouldn’t all parties be better off with a Chinese security guarantee to Iran?

A Chinese security guarantee would presumably allow Iran to forswear nuclear weapons (as it claims it has) and would also presumably allow Iran the comfort to give the IAEA the access it needs. For its part, China would achieve some assurance regarding a portion (about 11 percent) of its daily oil import requirement. And the United States, its allies in the Middle East, and Europe would achieve their goal of removing the Iranian nuclear threat (assuming of course that the Iranian government would allow the IAEA the access it would need to provide such an assurance). A Chinese security guarantee would be directly analogous to the security guarantees the United States has long provided its allies around the world, guarantees that have done wonders for nuclear nonproliferation.

Alas, such a “New Grand Bargain” is very unlikely to happen. The U.S. government (along with Saudi Arabia and other Middle East powers) is most unlikely to welcome Chinese military and political power into the heart of the Persian Gulf region. Iran, proud of its history and suspicious of all, would rather rely on nuclear-armed self-reliance than depend on another great power for protection. And China would see no reason to alter the status quo; it is already getting its oil and commercial relationships without having to take any diplomatic or military risks.

Which leaves us back where we are today, with a Persian Gulf arms race about to break out. As he considers Obama’s plea, President Hu should ponder what might go wrong with China’s Iran policy.

Hezbollah’s Scuds provide a test case for Obama’s deterrence doctrine

Does Hezbollah now possess Scud missiles? During its 2006 war against Israel, the group employed battlefield rockets against towns in Israel’s far north, with a few longer range rockets striking as far south as Haifa. A Hezbollah Scud ballistic missile by contrast could deliver an approximately one-ton warhead of high explosive or chemical munitions anywhere in Israeli territory. The Syrian government denied transferring Scuds to Hezbollah, while the U.S. government isn’t sure whether a transfer occurred.

Would a Hezbollah Scud capability fundamentally alter the strategic balance and perhaps lead to an Israeli preemptive strike against Hezbollah? Interestingly, the Obama administration’s new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which argues for a reduced reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence, seems to have anticipated this type of development. The NPR asserted that an expanded use of missile defenses, counter-WMD efforts, and overwhelming conventional military power should provide the deterrence against an increasing number of threats that nuclear weapons deterred in the past. Under the NPR’s reasoning, Israel should be able to employ these same measures to deter and defend against a possible Hezbollah Scud threat without resorting to either a preemptive strike or nuclear deterrence.

The first part of the equation is missile defense, which through much U.S. financial and technical assistance and its own research, Israel now has in abundance. Long-time skeptics of missile defense were concerned about these systems leading to destabilizing offensive missile arms races. Better, they said, to rely on the threat of devastating retaliation. For the Obama team, that theory is out — the priority now is on sidelining nuclear weapons.

The new NPR calls for “a devastating conventional military response” to provide deterrence when necessary, especially in response to chemical or biological attacks. Regarding Hezbollah and its alleged Scuds, how would Israel execute “a devastating conventional military response”? What lawful targets could Israel (or the United States in similar circumstances) strike that would inflict the “devastating” response? The Israeli air force’s 2006 bombing campaign against Lebanon seemed to exceed the limit of what informed world opinion would tolerate. In the case of hypothetical Hezbollah Scud attacks on Tel Aviv or elsewhere in Israel, would it be militarily useful or diplomatically wise for Israel to be any more devastating than it was in 2006? If not, might this method of deterrence lack credibility?

It might be the case that Israel’s air campaign against Lebanon in 2006, combined with the attrition its ground campaign subsequently inflicted, was devastating enough to constitute deterrence against Hezbollah. If true, the NPR’s non-nuclear deterrence formulation might have some hope.

But Israel was able to achieve that credibility for itself (if it did) only through a ruthless bombing campaign. Current U.S. military planners consider “a devastating conventional military response” to be an oxymoronic phrase; they are now taught to inflict as little damage as possible. Given the recent trends in U.S. military doctrine that scale back the use of firepower, how credible is it for the United States to threaten “a devastating conventional military response”? Achieving the NPR’s vision of non-nuclear deterrence will require convincing some hardened adversaries that the United States can be ruthless when it needs to be. But in today’s Pentagon, that attitude is not in fashion.