The pointlessness of "pure diplomacy"

Arthur Herman:

WEDNESDAY'S retirement of Adm. William Fallon may mean we're finally moving toward the right policy for dealing with Iran and its nuclear program before it's too late.

Fallon leaves as head of CentCom, which oversees US operations in the Middle East. He's a fine officer and former Vietnam naval aviator. But his approach to the Middle East's most dangerous rogue state has been to avoid confrontation (as when Revolutionary Guard speedboats buzzed American warships in the Gulf and met no response) and to reassure Tehran that we have no plans for taking military action against its ongoing nuclear-weapons program - which is, of course, exactly what the regime likes to hear.

In fact, Fallon's approach, and that of our State Department recently, has been to make that action more, not less, likely.

In dealing with rogue states, diplomacy can never be a substitute for, or even the alternative to, force. It can only be effective as the extension of force - force that is a credible threat because it will be decisive if unleashed, and because it plainly will be unleashed should diplomacy fail.

The pointlessness of "pure diplomacy" was on display last week, with the new UN "sanctions" against Iran's nuke builders.

The White House and State Department have been pushing for these new sanctions for nearly a year - even though the UN's own International Atomic Energy Agency has revealed that none of the sanctions adopted so far have even slowed Iran's progress toward developing nuclear weapons.

Yet these new "sanctions" turn out to be nothing more than a call for "vigilance" in dealing with the two Iranian banks involved in the country's nuclear program. Oh, the UN also calls for inspection of ship and air cargos to Iran that might include bomb-making materials that are banned under existing sanctions - but only if those goods are being shipped under Iranian colors.

This means that Iran's two main nuclear enablers, Russia and China, can still send whatever Iran needs to complete its uranium-enrichment efforts.

In other words, the Bush administration's long drive to bring diplomatic (as opposed to military) pressure to bear on Iran - to stop the nuclear program before it destabilizes the Middle East or worse - has been a complete waste of time. Worse, while we've diddled with diplomacy, Tehran has had five years to forge ahead with its plans.

Again, this drive explicitly abjured any use of military force. Secretary Condoleeza Rice has been reassuring the world that the United States wants a multilateral, diplomatic solution to the Iran "problem" rather than a unilateral military one, while Adm. Fallon was making similar pacific noises from Centcom.

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Diplomacy without the credible threat of the use of force is a gift of time to an adversary like Iran. What Fallon did was undermine any credible use of force that might have motivated Iran to pursue a diplomatic solution. Fallon and others have argued that attacking Iran would be disastrous for the US. There is little doubt that it would cause a reaction from Iran, but the devastation to Iran of a properly planned attack would be far worse than any reaction they can project at this time and that reaction would be far less than what Iran would o if given the gift of time to develop its nuclear weapons. The appeasement that is being pushed by the US intelligence agencies and people like Fallon is making a military confrontation more likely and under less favorable circumstances.