Where We Stand

Iran requires a new U.S. foreign policy:

The difficulty for our government now is that our new security environment is so much more vast — and vastly complicated — than any we have ever faced. The new defensive perimeter has less to do with geographic borders and more to do with destabilizing capabilities and activities. Should we use force to prevent Iran from gaining enrichment and reprocessing capabilities? Or should Iran’s pulling out of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty be the trigger for war? In neither situation would the use of force enjoy clear international legitimacy — but those may be our only rational choices if we are to avoid living in a world where the danger of nuclear terrorism is ever-present.

The most glaring omission in the president’s National Security Strategy is a precise definition of our new defensive perimeter in terms that international law can accommodate. We must define those things we consider to be acts of aggression, and begin transforming our concepts of international law accordingly. Today there is no conceivable national security strategy that can be both rational and “legitimate.”

But ours is neither — and it has to be both. The reason is that our first lines of defense now lie in the governing practices of other countries, most vitally what I would call “regime transparency.” And without proper international norms to shape regime behavior in non-threatening ways, we are leaving our defensive perimeter both undefined and undefended.

We should not be weighing the risks of action vs. the risks of inaction with Iran’s nuclear program, any more than we would have responded to Soviet incursions across the West German border on a case-by-case basis. We must stand ready to do whatever it takes to prevent widespread proliferation and the possibility of a nuclear terrorist attack. If our military forces are not now capable of the effort, we must make them capable. And having marked the perimeter, we must stand ready to fight and win.

We're not smart enough or serious enough to do this. After 9/11, we went right back to sleep, as the election of the cut-and-run Democrats amply demonstrates.

We will not wake up again until we have lost a major city to a terrorist nuke.