Obama's Russian Gambit on Iran

The crisis created by Iran's nuclear program continues to vex the Obama administration. The purely diplomatic approach appears not to be working, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has privately admitted. And that leaves-what?

A report in the Russian media suggests that President Obama is prepared for one final gambit on the diplomatic front. Obama, according to the report, has proposed that the United States scrap the missile defense system being built in Eastern Europe is exchange for Russia help on stopping Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal. The proposal has the germ of a clever diplomatic move, but also carries great risk.

Everything depends on what Russia has to do in exchange for the end of the missile defense system. If the deal is based on some sort of positive result, i.e. if Iran actually has to officially scrap its nuclear program, with an inspection regime to verify that it has done so, then Obama will have pulled off a coup. But if all Russia has to do is to promise to put pressure on Iran in exchange for no missile defense, then Barack Obama will have made a blunder almost comparable to the one Neville Chamberlain made at Munich in 1938.

Noting the tendency of past Democratic administrations in making bad deals, as well as President Obama's oft stated hostility to the idea of missile defense, one suspects that we may be about to see the latter. No greatest illustration can be made than the decision taken in 1978 by then President Jimmy Carter to suspend development of the so-called "neutron bomb" or as it was more properly called, the enhanced radiation weapon.

The so-called neutron bomb was designed to blunt a Soviet invasion of Europe by irradiating massed armored formations with a minimal of explosive or persistent fall out. The Soviets were against the deployment of the ERW because it would have negated the advantage it enjoyed in conventional armored forces. Opinion in some European countries was hostile because the neutron bomb was perceived as making nuclear war more likely.

President Jimmy Carter suspended the development of the ERW in a unilateral move to try to motivate the Soviets to be more forthcoming in arms control talks. Like much else that Jimmy Carter tried to do, the gambit did not work. One of the first acts that President Reagan undertook was to resume the development of the ERW.

If the Russian report is correct, President Obama may be about to repeat the mistake President Carter made. Suspending development of the missile defense system in Eastern Europe without something concrete in return, such as the complete abandonment of Iran's nuclear program, will be seen for what it is: a sign of weakness and an act of appeasement. An thus history will have repeated itself.

Sources: Clinton says U.S. diplomacy unlikely to end Iran nuclear program, Paul Richter, LA Times, March 3rd, 2009

Obama 'ready to drop shield plans for Russian help on Iran', RIA Novosti, March 3rd, 2009

1978: Carter delays N-bomb production, BBC - On THis Day, 7 April, 1978