With all the harsh rhetoric being tossed around on Iran, the situation there must really be worsening, right? Someone must’ve found concrete evidence that Iran’s nuclear program is being used to create weapons, or spotted Revolutionary Guard battalions readying for invasion at the borders Iraq and Afghanistan, or, at the very least, uncovered an invitation to a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad-Osama Bin Laden costume party (They went as giant axes of evil).
Why else would the president, vice president and secretary of state come out, within the span of a few weeks, with bellicose statements that “all options” for dealing with Iran remain on a mysterious “table” — unless, in the Halloween spirit, this table only has “Sonic Warheads” and BombPops.
The funny thing is that there is actually little reason to believe in an imminent threat, at least according to International Atomic Energy Agency Chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who earned some serious credibility and a Nobel Peace Prize after being absolutely right on Iraq’s nonexistent weapons program earlier this decade. On Monday he said on CNN, “Have we seen having the nuclear material that can be readily used into a weapon? No. Have we seen an active weaponization program? No.” He admitted that these are “possibilities” and “concerns” but he worried, like the rest of the world, that if the U.S. continued to up the rhetorical ante, “we would end up in a precipice; we would end up in an abyss.”
I consider this a startling new development in American foreign policy. What’s scary is that the escalation in rhetoric is not connected to a material crisis. The war drumbeat is reaching a crescendo while the rest of the song is being played softly. The saber is being rattled while it is still unclear whether the opponent is attempting to produce a blade.
Throughout most of our nation’s history, it took a dramatic catalyzing event — from the firing on Fort Sumter to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait — for the United States to commit to full-scale war. The merits of entering Cold War proxies and the checkered history of small-scale and covert operations aside, it was some consolation that America would not rush into the hell of major combat without verifiable and significant casus belli. Yet, in Iraq Part Deux, and possibly also in Iran, the U.S. has verbally forced the moment to its crisis prior to any such event.
In 2003, the U.S. theatrically gave Saddam 30 days to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1441, but the moment didn’t warrant an ultimatum. IAEA chief weapons inspector Hans Blix was still strident in his claim that not a single piece of WMD evidence had surfaced, and in any case it was very difficult to argue that Iraq then posed a greater threat than, say, North Korea. The U.S., however, waited for its self-imposed timeframe to pass and jumped headfirst into a conflict it imagined, a war not forced upon it but which it created.
Five years’ time brings us to another act in the same play. The U.S. is making unsubstantiated assertions about weapons in a Persian Gulf country beginning with I-R-A, and though the IAEA is heeding caution and qualifying the claims, the U.S. is chipping away at whatever relationship remains between itself and that country and is using diplomacy with the skill and nuance of Genghis Khan. And slowly, the public is becoming resigned to the fate of war.
Why is this happening again, and why aren’t we more outraged? I can only offer a hypothesis.
Say you have an administration notorious for a lack of tact and foresight in diplomatic statements. True to form, this administration makes a series of overly aggressive declarations about a foreign power — we’ll call it Ira.
In our modern times, where the media is ubiquitous and lightning-fast, airwaves, televisions, newspapers and computer screens are soon flooded with information about the government statements. Bloggers, columnists, fake news anchors, Fox News blowhards and many others with a societal soapbox tirelessly pour over the Ira issue.
No matter the media’s stance on its merits or implications, Ira has taken on singular importance in the public discourse vis-à-vis the infinitude of world politics.
The only equivalent means of directing public attention in the past was the half-page newspaper headline; an extraordinary action was reserved for major world events. Now, though, nearly anything that the government decides to make a focus in the politically sexy realm of foreign policy — in this case, the conflict with Ira — finds its way into the minds of its citizens via the multiplicity of informational conduits.
This inescapable onslaught of news about Ira gives the citizen a psychological illusion of escalation, the feeling and eventually the belief that the Ira situation is worsening. The government, in turn, is emboldened by the attention from the media and the reaction of the citizenry and continues to pursue, even escalate, the crisis with Ira. And these three spheres, government, media and public opinion, go on mutually reinforcing one another until there is a sort of synthetic national consensus for war with Ira.
If I’m right, it means the onus is on us citizens to navigate the sea of information at our disposal, and to maneuver out of the strong currents emanating from the government to develop informed, independent opinions. Should the push for war with Iran become more real, it’s our duty to make intelligent determinations as to whether the cause is worth the sacrifice. If we don’t, and they fool us twice, shame on us.
The government, on the other hand, needs to respect the power of its megaphone. I appreciate the imperative to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and I don’t mind the new sanctions in the context of the broader diplomatic strategy that we’re all waiting on, but I don’t see much good that can come from today’s sound and fury. Our leadership needs only look back a few years to see that rhetorical belligerence can set the real thing in motion.
It should also look further back to a time when America spoke softly and carried a big stick. That piece of lumber is still rather large, and Tehran can just look to its eastern or western border if it doubts our willingness to employ it. And for that reason, as well as the need to give real diplomacy a chance, let’s refrain from putting it, or yelling about its presence on a table.
John Sprangers ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science and international studies.
