Resident Scholar  Michael Rubin

No trends in the U.S. foreign policy debate are more dangerous than self-flagellation and defeatism. Lt. Gen. William Odom is guilty of both ("21 Solutions to Save the World: The Nuclear Option," May/June 2007). To blame recent Iranian and North Korean behavior on U.S. President George W. Bush defies accuracy. Both Tehran's and Pyongyang's nuclear programs accelerated alongside the U.S. engagement of the 1990s. Too often, policymakers prioritize diplomacy and deals over their substance and content. Now, we're paying the price for that kind of thinking.

Nor is Odom correct to assume that welcoming Iran and North Korea into the nuclear club will bring security. Cold War stability is a myth; the United States and the Soviet Union were simply lucky that nuclear crises did not spin out of control. Add the messianic ideology of some factions of Iran's clerical leadership to the mix, and the efficacy of traditional deterrence is even less certain. If Odom does not recognize the primacy of ideology to Iran's theocratic leadership, he misunderstands the Islamic Republic's motivations for its long embrace of terrorism and its defiance of international norms. Arguing that the Iranian leadership opposes al Qaeda is undermined by the findings of the 9/11 Commission. Pragmatism in Iran's theocratic circles is often more about bridging the Islamic sectarian divide to combat Western culture than a sincere effort at diplomacy. Although external regime change is out of the question, policymakers in the United States should neither preserve rogue regimes against their own demographic pressures nor rescue them from their economic failures. Offering inducements to them on the nuclear issue would do just that.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.