(2006-02-22) Pinkerton Containment Iran Middle East

James Pinkerton thinks that a Containment policy will be best in the Middle East/Iran.

In 1946 (Cold War), three schools of thought emerged; we can dub them the Conciliators, the Rollbackers, and the Containers... "The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies." But even as George Kennan saw the Soviets as a threat, he also saw the risk of America's overplaying its hand; in the very next sentence, he added, "It is important to note, however, that such a policy has nothing to do with outward histrionics: with threats or blustering or superfluous gestures of outward 'toughness.'" So Kennan's keep-cool "containment" led, naturally, to the Cold War.

Rollback didn't work out as planned in Iraq, but the neo-Burnhamites -- oops, Neo Conservative-s -- are still gung ho for mo' military action... the true essence of rollback, as "Burnham the Liberator" would have insisted, is not just toppling the enemy regime, but replacing it with a new friendly government. And yet such confident talk is conspicuously absent from current discussions of Iran... Indeed, the emerging reality is that Muslims don't like the West... If so, then knocking over the Ahmadinejad government might not help us much, even if we knew how to do it, because the new bosses would be about the same as the old bosses... So we will settle for rolling back just their nuclear/WMD ambitions, as they become visible to us, leaving the populations to stew in their increasingly Salafist juices. Here's a prediction: this particular neocon scenario won't work... eventually, after they get bombed enough, with or without Ahmadinejad, the Iranians will sober up and realize that they need a Big Friend, to protect them from us... And the biggest potential Friend of all is China.