Nuclear weapons won't necessarily make Iran more aggressive
Historical record is mixed on whether new nuclear nations become more aggressive or not, with nuclear weapons in some cases making aggressive nations less bellicose.
Quicktabs: Arguments
Notwithstanding these considerations, it is important not to overestimate the utility of nuclear weapons. To date, nation-states have not found them to be useful as instruments of overt military aggression. While the possession of nuclear weapons may allow North Korea and Iran to pursue more vigorously objectives that run counter to U.S. interests, it seems likely that these adversaries will do this in a constrained fashion. In fact, we have no historical cases in which an emerging nuclear power undertook large-scale military aggression to advance revisionist claims. So we do not foresee a nuclear-armed North Korea becoming likelier to invade South Korea. Nor do we expect that Iran would use nuclear weapons, should it acquire them, as a shield to facilitate large-scale conventional aggression against Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf states, or adversaries further afield, including Israel.
A close look at the history of the nuclear age shows that countries with nuclear weapons are neither more likely to make coercive threats nor more likely to succeed in blackmailing their adversaries. Nuclear powers such as the United States and the Soviet Union certainly made numerous threats after they acquired nuclear weapons. But so did Libya, Serbia, Turkey, Iraq, Venezuela, and dozens of other countries that did not possess the bomb. Nuclear weapons are not a prerequisite for engaging in military blackmail. Further, there is scant evidence that possessing the bomb makes coercive threats more successful when they are made. Nuclear weapons did not help the United States compel North Korea to release the USS Pueblo and its crew in 1968. Israeli coercive threats backed by the implicit threat of nuclear war failed against Syria prior to the 1982 Lebanon War, just as British threats against Argentina in 1982 were unable to compel the return of the Falkland Islands, despite Britain’s possession of nuclear weapons.
Would a nuclear-armed Iran have more success blackmailing its neighbors? The historical record suggests not. For example, during the 20th century, Britain made successful threats against Germany, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Turkey, and others before acquiring nuclear weapons in 1952. Since acquiring the bomb, however, it has made only one successful threat, as part of a NATO coalition against the Bosnian Serbs in 1994. Many hardliners say Iran’s ideological fervor makes it unique. US officials voiced similar concerns about Mao’s China in the early 1960s. But nuclear weapons did not embolden China. Iran today is certainly different from China in the 1960s, but policymakers would do well to remember that apocalyptic fears about nuclear proliferation are not new.
The Pakistani-Indian conflict may be such a situation. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal may have enabled it to engage in riskier behavior in Kashmir than it otherwise would attempt, because nuclear weapons help to deter Pakistan’s ultimate nightmare: an assault by the militarily superior India, which could slice Pakistan in two and perhaps destroy it completely. But if you try to apply that logic to Iran, no one is playing the role of India. Iran has its own tensions and rivalries with its neighbors— including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, other states on the Persian Gulf, and Pakistan. But none of these pose the kind of existential threat that Pakistan sees coming from India. Moreover, none of the current disputes between Iran and its neighbors (such as the one over ownership of some small islands also claimed by the United Arab Emirates) come close to possessing the nation-defining significance that the Kashmir conflict poses for both Pakistan and India.
Nevertheless, even some observers and policymakers who accept that the Iranian regime is rational still worry that a nuclear weapon would embolden it, providing Tehran with a shield that would al low it to act more aggressively and increase its support for terrorism. Some analysts even fear that Iran would directly provide terrorists with nuclear arms. The problem with these concerns is that they contradict the record of every other nuclear weapons state going back to 1945. History shows that when countries acquire the bomb, they feel increasingly vulnerable and become acutely aware that their nuclear weapons make them a potential target in the eyes of major powers. This awareness discourages nuclear states from bold and aggressive action. Maoist China, for example, became much less bellicose after acquiring nuclear weapons in 1964, and India and Pakistan have both become more cautious since going nuclear. There is little reason to believe Iran would break this mold.
In 1964, when the PRC tested its arst nuclear device, China was perhaps the most “rogue” state in modern history. Mao Zedong’s domestic policies caused the death of tens of millions of China’s citizens. Moreover, he had pursued an aggressive foreign policy before the atomic test. Examples include attacking India, aghting the United States directly in Korea and by proxy in Vietnam (where it armed a nonstate actor, the Vietcong), and threatening war over Tai- wan. Mao made a series of highly irresponsible statements about the PRC surviving and even thriving in a nuclear war. No country in the post–World War II period—not Iraq, Iran, or even North Korea—has given U.S. policymak- ers more reason to fear its nuclearization than China.34
Within five years of the PRC’s nuclear test, however, the United States and China initiated a covert dialogue. In less than a decade, they began an anti- Soviet alliance that put great pressure on Russia and helped to bring the Cold War to an end. Nuclear weapons did not make China more hostile. If anything, its foreign policies became less aggressive and more mature over time. Today China has one of the most restrained and most responsible nuclear force postures and deployment policies of any nuclear power; it maintains a mini- mal deterrent under tight command and control while eschewing a arst-use doctrine.35
That Iran—surrounded by rivals with nuclear ambitions and singled out by the United States, the largest military power in the world—has an interest in nuclear weapons is not surprising. Even assessments that view Iranian behavior as a challenge to U.S. interests in the Middle East do not consider the regime as threatening as the PRC was during the 1960s. As Shahram Chubin writes, “It is not overtly confrontational or given to wild swings in behavior or to delusional goals; it has not denounced arms control treaties to which it formally adheres; and there is evidence of pluralism and some debate within the country.”36 Nuclear weapons could make Iran more aggressive. Or, as with China, they could provide international legitimacy and security, making Iran less aggressive than it has been. As one recent analysis put it, “If anything, Iran might and that possession of a nuclear weapon actually diminishes its op- tions in the Middle East and forces it to act with greater restraint.”37 A deeper understanding of nuclear history and the underlying geopolitical circum- stances Iran faces makes the prospect that it would take actions (such as supplying Hamas or Hezbollah with nuclear weapons) that could invite its own destruction highly unlikely.38
In the first case, Iran’s conventional military capabilities are limited. Iran’s military was weakened in the 1980s and has not greatly improved since. Huge investments are needed, though none seem forthcoming. And because a nuclear Iran is likely to have triggered a more robust, multilateral sanctions regime on its way to successful proliferation, it is conceivable that even if it had the economic means to rebuild and rearm it would have trouble doing so. Nuclear Iran, as a result, is unlikely to be able to effectively mount a conventional military campaign against any regional state, except perhaps the smallest Gulf sheikdoms. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and maybe even Kuwait are likely to be able to fend off a conventional Iranian invasion with some timely assistance from the U.S. And weaker Arab states, with a promise of rapid deployment of U.S. reinforcements, might be able to sufficiently forestall a conventional Iranian engagement and deny Tehran its immediate objects. Furthermore, the United States is likely to retain a presence in the Gulf, both on land and at sea, for the foreseeable future. As Posen explains, “even if Iran’s leaders somehow feel safe at home, the forces they dispatch abroad would surely be destroyed.”69 Evidently, allaying the threat of an emboldened nuclear Iran can be accomplished by relying on the threat of superior conventional force. A resurgent Iran sans the conventional tools of war is not a great threat. Security guarantees coupled with the tactful placement of U.S. military personnel in likely hotspots will send a signal that, first, nuclear Iran cannot easily acquire what it wants by conventional force, and second, even if it tries, it risks killing Americans in the process and triggering greater U.S. engagement. American soldiers have already been used as tripwires to dissuade Soviet aggression. The same principle can be applied to nuclear Iran.70 The upshot is that even under a nuclear shield, Iran faces few good options for launching a conventional attack, is likely to be denied its goals if it tries, and risks having to bear substantial costs.
One might argue these findings are not applicable to Iran, due to that country’s unique culture and religion and its distinct geopolitical and economic motives to develop nuclear weapons. However, the fact is that almost all states that have developed nuclear weapons have stumbled into a crisis out of inexperience and then authorized more moderate nuclear strategies and foreign policies after a few years’ experience. This “experience effect” in the cases of the United States (in Korea), the Soviet Union (in Hungary), the United Kingdom (in Egypt) and France (in Algeria), cases in the late 1940s and early 1950s, are likely attributable to the early Cold War as well as nuclear weapons. It is not clear that fear played a role here, because the uncertainty associated with the early Cold War drove the conflict propensity of the new nuclear powers. However, all inexperienced nuclear powers since the late 1950s have found themselves in conflicts and wars either trying to revise a status quo (Soviet Union and Pakistan) or preventing and/or coercing a revisionist nuclear power from doing so (India). In China’s case, nuclear weapons seem to have emboldened the Chinese to respond more forcefully to aggressive Soviet patrolling of disputed territory. In some cases whether the new nuclear power is revising or defending the status quo is unclear, because many other factors are also changing in a particular region, for example Israel and South Africa. Nevertheless, the fact that countries as different as the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, China in the late 1960s, and Pakistan in the early 2000s exhibited strikingly similar variation in their fundamental choices of coercive or moderate nuclear strategies shows that the great nuclear learning phenomenon knows no cultural or geographic bounds even though these countries exhibit important dif- ferences. The effect of experience with nuclear weapons on the central elements of their nuclear strategies over time is striking.
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The author reviews his recent study using historical examples to predict how states will act once they have acquired nuclear weapons, finding "history suggests that if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, it would be less universally emboldened than the pessimists fear, but nor would it find nuclear weapons to be useless."
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