In Defense of Hillary’s Tough Talk
I’m going to do something not a lot of people outside the Clinton campaign have been willing to do: I’m going to defend Hillary Clinton’s threat to “obliterate” Iran if it should attack Israel. I’d take issue with Senator Obama’s dismissive response, too: Hillary’s clear, tough message is exactly the language that’s needed right now, and as for sounding like George W. Bush, who cares? The Bush Iran policy is defunct and dysfunctional, and what matters now is what the next President is going to do about it.
Here’s what Hillary actually said:
“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.”
This was consistent with her message to Israel:
“If you were the subject of an unprovoked nuclear attack by Iran, the United States, and hopefully our NATO allies, would respond to that.”
Hillary’s policy formulation is essentially a nuclear umbrella for Israel against Iranian aggression, and there are three big reasons why this is exactly the right policy:
First, a credible threat of massive retaliation is the only way nuclear weapons can result in greater security and stability, period. Nuclear arsenals are fundamentally political tools more than battlefield weapons. They serve to deter an enemy from attacking in the first place by guaranteeing that the consequences of an attack will be so dire that no rational actor could contemplate provoking them. For a nuclear threat to have a real deterrent effect, however, the enemy must genuinely believe that retaliation will be both unhesitating and overwhelming. For a US President to suggest that our response to Iranian aggression would be anything short of immediate and overwhelming would, at the very least, completely discredit our nuclear deterrent. Sure, we would never want to rely exclusively on that deterrent to manage the Iranian threat, but forswearing what Clinton called “massive retaliation” would make Iran more secure and the US and Israel less so. The consequences for Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and other allies relying on the US nuclear umbrella for deterrence would be similarly negative.
Second, it’s a lot better for regional security and for US interests to have the US, and not Israel, threatening nuclear retaliation against Iran. Israel has nuclear weapons. We all know that. What fewer people realize is that because Israel’s entire infrastructure and population could be wiped out with one or two well-placed nuclear strikes, it must also maintain an extra-territorial nuclear arsenal, giving it the capacity to hit Iran with nuclear weapons even after a successful Iranian first-strike. While in that sense Israel’s deterrent capacity looks similar to ours, it is in practice much less effective. Israel’s air and sea-based nuclear weapons are undeclared, making the deterrent less credible. But given that it would certainly not survive a nuclear exchange, Israel might prefer a first-strike policy against an imminent nuclear threat, abandoning deterrence altogether. In any case, for Israel even to acknowledge it has a nuclear retaliatory capacity is to invite the assumption by its Arab neighbors that Israel could follow a first-strike path, which might provoke a full-blown nuclear arms race in the region. The whole point of committing the US to retaliate on Israel’s behalf would be to satisfy Israel’s legitimate need to deter Iran, without needlessly escalating overall tensions in the region. That makes a lot of sense.
Third, Hillary’s “massive retaliation” formula is a practical—if not ideal—long term response to the Iranian nuclear threat, and the only one of the three candidates’ policies that seems to bear any relation to reality. By the time we pick our next President, the EU-3 and the IAEA will have been negotiating directly with Iran for over five years, without concluding a successful agreement to end the country’s nuclear program. This is most likely because, whether or not it intends to build a bomb, Iran fully intends to possess a completed nuclear fuel cycle as a source of national pride, economic stimulus and energy security. Even the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which some experts say underestimates the threat, acknowledges that Iran is determined to enrich uranium, the key step in manufacturing a nuclear weapon.
So while I appreciate Obama’s determination to engage in direct US-Iranian dialogue on the issue, he’s no more likely to win concessions than the Europeans have been. And I know I’m not the only one seriously concerned by John McCain’s apparent willingness to stop Iranian enrichment by military force, since any “preventive” attack on Iran is guaranteed to produce a wider regional war. If Iran continues to enrich uranium, as it is likely to do, and at some point soon produces a weapon or enough material to quickly build one, then Hillary’s response is the only one that offers any semblance of security. Sure, it’s not ideal to imagine a world where Iran has nuclear weapons. But that’s a very real possibility, and I’d rather Iran knew that using nukes would bring about its own obliteration than leave any room for doubt.
No related posts.
A thoughtful defense of this statement is long overdue, and Matt has offered an excellent one. As an Obama supporter I give him considerable leeway to maneuver, criticize terminologies, appeal to the Democratic base, draw distinctions, etc. But that only goes so far and for so long. At some point (I can wait until the nomination is decided) he needs to take substantive positions on issues such as this and risk some criticism from the kumbaya camp. Hillary’s not the one to prod him to do so (not that he should have to be prodded), but hopefully McCain can make Obama articulate what I trust are his true instincts. How’s that for a bipartisan foreign policy?
Comment on May 8, 2008 @ 10:35 am
Some choice comments from a friend who prefers to remain anonymous:
The problem, I believe, is not with Hillary’s framework (though that’s wrong too) but the specific way she articulated it.
Had she simply said, “Massive and overwhelming retaliation” that would have been fine. I think that, given that Iran doesn’t even have a nuclear weapon yet, the desire to imagine your way into a situation in which you basically promise to use a nuclear weapon against them is dangerous, demagogic, premature, and totally unhelpful.
Imagine yourself in Iran. Your leader maybe, depending on your Farsi, threatens obliquely to annihilate Israel. People threaten to take him to court for exhortation to Genocide. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton talks openly– with a grin on her face — about how she’d obliterate Iran, which amounts to a threat of genocidal murder. That is the wrong side of the implicit/explicit line that politicians are really careful to walk. Moreover, Iran has Presidential elections next May. Cue the Amadinejad advertising… America is going to obliterate you, just ask Hillary Clinton or John McCain and you want to moderate our policies?
It’s like Kissinger’s comment about preemption– you might well do it, but what do you get from SAYING you’re going to do it. Nothing except political gain. The problem is that Hillary’s audience is entirely domestic– she’s concerned about the hawkish wing of the US jewish community and John McCain and (Sorry to say it) being a woman candidate. Had Barack done what she did, she’d have attacked him mercilessly for his inexperience and lack of savvy (as she did on Pakistan, where he had the better policy argument).
The idea of a nuclear umbrella for Israel is an important question (note, btw, that she also talked about a nuclear ubmrella for Saudi Arabia, which is a *major* policy proposal she seemed to accidentally offload during a debate)
More broadly, I think engaging Iran will be fundamental to drawing down our forces in Iraq. We have to figure out how to set bright lines while dealing with a bad actor. But you don’t do that by threatening extermination. The reality is, we’re not going to stop Iran from going nuclear without real engagement–we might not anyway– and do you really think HRC’s remarks pushed us further in that direction?
I actually put this very much in the category of the gas tax: she knows it’s the wrong policy, but it makes good political theater, so she’ll take it. For now. I hope people keep asking her about the gas tax next summer and teh summer after, when she’s no longer running.
Let me add that there’s a long history of leaders not threatening to use nuclear weapons, even in situations where they make clear that they would. the reason is that every time it’s done moves us that much closer to breaking the taboo– and more practically because nobody wants to narrow their options in such an apocalyptic position….
the problem is “Chekhov’s gun” the quote from the playwright that says, “If a gun is on the mantle in the first act, it must go off in the third.”
Comment on May 8, 2008 @ 11:11 am
Thoughtful comments from anonymous as well. Some quick comments in response. First, even Hillary conceded what she said was a poor choice of words. That admission was background to my comments, though Matt appeared to like them, and I can see how one would. “Massive and overwhelming” force is not what Iran would be using against Israel; it would effectively be a genocidal attack. Hillary’s threat to respond in kind sounds, then, proportional, and the assumption that it would be via nuclear means is a fair one, surely, but not the only one. And in any event isn’t this an example of the “long history of leaders not threatening to use nuclear weapons, even in situations where they make clear that they would”?
Also, I don’t think the preemption analogy is entirely apposite. The reason why Kissinger is right to question stating it as a policy is that it is usually, due to incomplete information and high costs on the potential attacker’s side, it is rarely a credible threat. But it is sufficiently worrisome to prompt states to quickly build up a deterrent immunizing them from preemption, hastening the very problem preemption seeks to address. The reason why a threat to retaliate against a state is more useful is that it is far more credible than a threat to preempt, as the action triggering the retaliation is clear for all to see and the initial aggressor has, unlike in the preemption scenario, already played his hand.
Also, to be clear, the threat was made only in the context of retaliation. Sure Ahmedinejad can claim Clinton/McCain want to obliterate you, the Iranian people, but it was clear that it was only if Iran attacked Israel, which Ahmedinejad of course has implicitly threatened to do. Iranians may actually see that as a reason to oppose his hardline policies (perhaps more so re Israel, less nukes), although the average man/woman’s thoughts on the matter count only for so much. The elites who’ve critized his anti-Israel rhetoric (and there are many) are going to take Hillary’s words (and Obama’s hopefully to follow) into account.
Chekhov’s warning is notable, but unfortunately it was Iran that put the gun on the mantle, and who’d be firing the first shot. A full-throated warning not to do so, while perhaps inartfully expressed by Clinton, is an important element in preventing that occurrence. That doesn’t undermine engagement, and may well in fact encourage it as MAD is left to work its dark magic.
Comment on May 8, 2008 @ 1:52 pm