State of the Union II: Iran and Nukes

Last night, Bush accused Iran of 'defying the world with its nuclear ambitions' and then proclaimed that 'the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons.' The recent hysteria about a possible nuclear Iran has reached such a state that post-speech pundits from both parties viewed Bush's statements as soft on the issue. But despite all this talk of danger, crisis, and rogue nations, surprisingly little attention has been given to exactly why Iran might want the weapons. As Simon Jenkins writes in the Guardian, Iran is a regional power surrounded by nuclear states (India, Pakistan, occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel, never mind Russia and China). It's a serious country with obvious security reasons to seek its own nuclear arms. If anything, nuclear power is one issue that links internal supporters and critics of the government. Empty threats simply expose the fact that Iran can't be treated like a banana republic.

Yet, besides security calculations something else, highlighted by an underreported flap between India and the U.S. Ambassador to Delhi, is at stake. After the U.S. publicly attempted to coerce India into backing a U.N. motion by putting future nuclear deals on the line, Ambassador Mumford was summoned by India's Foreign Secretary and chastised behind closed doors. The forceful Indian response brought out that for most postcolonial states, nuclear weapons are as much a matter of independence and national pride as they are of security. Delhi was furious with the U.S. for making its strong-arming public because the American Ambassador treated India as if it were fundamentally unequal. Despite being an economic, military, and nuclear power, India apparently still didn't deserve a place at the backroom table.

In a sense, by thinking only in terms of security, the Administration (as well as many Democratic critics) are incredibly obtuse in recognizing others' concerns. It's not merely cynical power-politics. Both parties too often assume that the only foreign policy issue is 'security' whereas 'equality' and 'independence' may be more relevant. Nuclear weapons are about killing people, but they are also about equalizing conditions in an extremely unequal international system. The issue for many Third World states is how to gain and sustain meaningful independence without precipitating real crises, but the American security fixation means that most commentators, let alone the war hawks at the Weekly Standard, don't even realize this. American aggressiveness on Iran, besides being a plan with no endgame, speaks only one language, and it's one with a wild tendency toward exaggeration and misperception.