No plan B - could the US ever learn to live with Iran in the nuclear club?

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

The Bush administration has yet to decide on a clear plan B for Iran if diplomacy and sanctions fail to persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. But military planning is progressing to fill that policy vacuum and may create a momentum of its own, former administration officials and political observers said yesterday.

After the fall of Baghdad three years ago, US marines completed an analysis for an amphibious assault on a radical, fictitious Middle Eastern theocracy called Karona, a thinly disguised version of Iran, according to William Arkin, a former army intelligence officer who writes on military affairs for Washington Post online.

In parallel with the marines' plan, the Pentagon has ordered US central command to conduct an analysis of a fullscale war with Iran in the "near term".

In July 2004, US and British army planners met at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to play a war game codenamed Hotspur 2004, fictitiously set in 2015 in the Caspian Sea, in which a British medium-weight brigade operated as part of a US-led force.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1754378,00.html

[sutz12]

1. Shit, they don't have a decent Plan A.

[LynnTheDem]

2. What Iranian "nuclear ambitions"? Nuclear energy? Iran has a legal right

to that.

[lumberjack_jeff]

3. Same as their plan A for Pakistan

... which does have nuclear weapons - sell 'em f-16's.

Iran is 10 years from a nuke (assuming that they are lying and are in fact seeking to develop one) but Pakistani radicals are one week away. (the realistic time required for a successful coup)

[LSparkle]

4. I'm surprised the rest of the world hasn't taken OUR weapons away

After all, the US is the ONLY nation to have USED NUCLEAR WEAPONS AGAINST ANOTHER NATION. It's sickeningly hypocritical of us to deny Iran the right to use nuclear power for PEACEFUL purposes.

[darkmaestro019]

7. (applause!) That's what drives me the most crazy.....

is US sitting on our giant arsenal and our prior record of, uh, evil, bossing other countries around about what they can and cannot have because THEY might be dangerous. The unmitigated gall. Actually, I think the Jews have the best, most evocative word for that--chutzpah.

[TheCowsCameHome]

5. Plan? Plan? What's a plan? We just do something and then see how it goes.

[David in Canada]

6. They won't

They won't allow it because it will actually force them to respect Iran.

[stillcool]

8. Plan B? What's plan A?...

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="" border="0" alt="Image hosting by Photobucket"></a>

February 14, 2002: US Military Bases Line Afghan Pipeline Route
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=pipelinePolitics
The Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv notes: “If one looks at the map of the big American bases created , one is struck by the fact that they are completely identical to the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean.” Ma’ariv also states, “Osama bin Laden did not comprehend that his actions serve American interests... If I were a believer in conspiracy theory, I would think that bin Laden is an American agent. Not being one I can only wonder at the coincidence.”

Chicago Tribune, 4/18/2002]

Following its bombing of Iraq in 1991, the United States wound up with military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
Following its bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the United States wound up with military bases in Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia.
Following its bombing of Afghanistan in 2001-2, the United States wound up with military bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Yemen and Djibouti.
Following its bombing and invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States wound up with Iraq.
This is not very subtle foreign policy. Certainly not covert. The men who run the American Empire are not easily embarrassed.
And that's the way the empire grows -- a base in every region, ready to be mobilized to put down any threat to imperial rule, real or imagined. Sixty years after World War II ended, the United States still has major bases in Germany and Japan; fifty-two years after the end of the Korean War, tens of thousands of American armed forces continue to be stationed in South Korea.
http://www.killinghope.org/

[teryang]

14. The archipelego of military bases in Asia is unsustainable

They can only be resupplied by air. Aerospace advocates like Rumsfeld and General Myers have blundered into this "geopolitical strategy." We are a seapower, throughput limitations on air commerce will not support a major war effort in Asia. The air base logistics system in Asia will fail in a major conflict because there are inadequate sea and land based lines of communication. This is the significance of the IED warfare in Iraq which no one in the administration seems to understand. The system is already failing in Iraq because of its exhortitant costs as compared to sea lift. Road interdiction is easy in Asia because we don't have the manpower to secure the routes.

The Berlin airlift is okay for a cold war emergency, it doesn't work in a hot war, not even just a regional colonial conflict. This is why our troops and administrators are holed up on the bases and dread leaving them. They know land routes are insecure and can't be secured. Why don't we have enough personnel? Because we don't have the lift capability to support a larger amount of men for any protracted period. The absence of an adequate sea lift ground route system leads to a smaller force. The smaller forces leads to dependence on air lift. The dependence on air lift is a negative force cost multiplier leading to further ineffectiveness tactically.

[bemildred]

15. Well put.

One way to win a war, and more common than you might think, is to drive the other guy into bankruptcy.

[teryang]

17. Thank you. I wrote on the economic aspect earlier today.

It is inevitable based upon defense economics that we will ultimately withdraw in defeat from Iraq. The squandering of the national treasury to benefit the relatively few shareholders in the defense contractor and energy sectors cannot last. Ironically, the profligate waste of resources upon unproductive defense enterprises damages our military posture all the more by further neglect of our manufacturing base. Defense is not a growth industry. Even much of their manufacturing infrastructure lies outside in the US, accelerating our economic decline. While defense sector industry can only prosper temporarily off of debt funded government handouts, their down cycle of withdrawal and retrenchment are inevitable just as the British withdrawal from India was inevitable.

Even during the doomed Vietnam conflict we were on a much stronger economic footing than we are now. The negative leverage of fighting in a conflict we fundamentally didn't understand, a long way from home with extended lines of logistical effort (acting as negative cost multiplier), with demographic and geographic disadvantage in the battle area, allowed a purported technologically inferior enemy gave us a sound thrashing.

Now we are weaker and our opponent is weaker still in material terms. However, the opponents have the home advantage, they have the cultural (intelligence) advantage, they have the moral advantage (as we are the aggressor), they have the shorter lines of communication and logistics, they have powerful allies and neighbors willing to assist them drive us out, they have the numerical and demographic advantage in young men of fighting age, they have access to virtually unlimited supplies of weapons (from China and Russia).

While their economy is already ruined and they have suffered physical and personal devastation, they are motivated and have nowhere to go but up. Our economic and political devastation is on the way if we continue as we have been, so we still have much to lose, even though we have lost tremendous resources already. It is a cultural and psychological calculus but at bottom, economic. Those politicians who speak of the new technology changing everything about warfare or giving us some unbeatable advantage, are repeating the same blunder heard during Vietnam and Korea. Be assured, we are losing and the outcome is inevitable and predictable as the planetary movements. It's cost benefit analysis, Defense Economics 101.

For years the conservatives crowed "looked what we did to the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan, we gave them their Vietnam." For years the rest of the world will crow, "looked what we did to the former United States in Iraq."

My only additional comment in response to your bankruptcy observation would be that we are already unable to meet our financial commitments, it is only the seemingly unlimited ability to borrow to create liquidity that appears to keep us afloat. In spite of the huge expenditures the efforts in Asia are constricted. I guess the defense shareholders can try to go for broke by expanding the front to Iran.

[cassiepriam]

9. We better learn, since we are the ones causing other countries

to get up to nuclear speed in terms of defending themselves. They do not want to be like Iraq, I cannot blame them.

[yourout]

10. Don't have much choice but to live with it.

Any military options will eventually leed to WWIII.

[oblivious]

11. Iran and the West define 'nuclear club' differently.

The west defines it as those countries which have nuclear weapons.

Iran defines it as which countries have the technology to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.

[Robbien]

12. Plan B: Then a miracle happens

:shrug:

[daleo]

13. Plan A is war

Plan B is more war.

[Ezlivin]

16. What did we do when the USSR tried to build nuclear weapons?

Or China?

Or Israel?