America should encourage the
country’s break-up from within, argues
edward
luttwak
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Almost
everyone in Washington agrees that Iran
is the big winner in the Middle East
power competition and the United States
is the big loser.
Instead of the
hostile Taliban, Iran now has a friendly
Afghan government on its eastern border;
instead of having to face Saddam
Hussein's regime, which inflicted huge
casualties on its ragged armies, Iran
has nothing to fear from an Iraqi
government dominated by its friends and
obedient clients, many of whom lived as
protected exiles in Iran for 20 years or
more.
The US, having
crushed Iran's enemies, now finds itself
under attack by Iran's rulers, who no
longer have to focus on defending their
own borders, and can instead challenge
American interests all over the Middle
East, and as far away as Venezuela.
Meanwhile, the building of Iranian
facilities to process,
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from the inside, Iran is hardly the
formidable power that some see from the
outside |
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gasify and enrich uranium
continues without interruption.
For some, all this is a
compelling argument for negotiations with Iran,
in the hope that its mighty rulers can be
persuaded to stop arming and inciting the
insurgents who are attacking American and
British troops in Iraq.
Now there is even talk of a detente
with Iran, that being the standard
diplomatic method to deal with a hostile country
too powerful to be intimidated or defeated, with
which one must simply coexist on the best terms
that can be had. In this case, it would
necessarily mean coexistence with Iran's
continued support for Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic
Jihad and three different Iraqi militias, as
well as Iran's nuclear programme.
Detente cannot be
rejected when the realities of power allow no
better choice. But back in the 1970s, detente
with the Soviet Union was bitterly
criticised on the grounds that it actually
propped up a regime that was in irreversible
decline. In the 1980s, the critics of that detente,
led by President Reagan, had their opportunity
to challenge the Soviet 
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