Fragility and Iran
By Bird Dog at Tacitus approvingly quotes the following from Richard Russell:
American aircraft and cruise missiles also could target Iran’s key political, security, and military infrastructures to harm the power of the regime in Tehran. Strikes could target government buildings and even the homes of clerics; facilities and compounds used by internal security and policy forces; assets of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Basij forces; major army units and garrisons; and WMD delivery vehicles, such as aircraft and ballistic missiles, as well as their production facilities. Targeting internal security organs would be particularly useful because that might allow the disgruntled populace more freedom to demonstrate against the regime and substantially increase the pressure on clerics to forgo their nuclear weapons aspirations.
Wow. This is impressive. Apparently, the United States is capable of toppling or at least terrifying the Iranian regime without an invasion. Even though airstrikes have never been able to do serious damage to ground forces in defensive positions, we can seriously degrade the capacity of the Iranian Army. Even though the Iranian population supports the nuclear weapons program by a substantial margin, we can facilitate popular pressure that will force the regime to back down. Even though targeting security apparati in an authoritarian state has NEVER resulted in the collapse of that state, we can seriously weaken the clerical grip on power by attacking the security apparatus. Cool. What are we waiting for?
I don’t know why I’m still surprised by this kind of bullshit. Air power advocates have long made absurd claims regarding the capacity of their favorite weapons. Back in the 1920s, this was okay. Giulio Douhet might have been on to something when he theorized that strategic bombing would transform warfare. He believed that a direct attack on civilians in the enemy homeland would create a groundswell of anger against the enemy regime, forcing it to concede. Bombing would destroy civilian security institutions, leaving the enemy regime at the mercy of an angry and potentially revolutionary mob. Douhet’s analysis depends on a model of the state that regards the urban social structure as inherently fragile, much like a house of cards. Remove one card through bombing, and the whole thing collapses. Douhet had some good reasons to think that this was the case; in the wake of the Russian Revolution and the revolutionary movements in Germany around the end of World War I, he and others can hardly be blamed for believing that a few well placed bombs might make the whole system collapsed.
Of course, we live in 2004, not 1920, and it’s possible for us to learn from past experience. In short, things don’t happen like air power advocates think that they will. Bombing makes a regime more popular, not less. Populations that are attacked identify with their own leaders, rather than the nation that is bombing. The social structure is far more flexible and resilient than theorists in the 1920s believed. Air power advocates (who share much with neocons) mistake their wet dreams for reality; popping a few cruise missiles into Iranian police stations ain’t going to spell the end of the Islamic Republic.
You want empirical examples? The German blitz of 1940 made Churchill more, not less, popular. Strategic bombing against Germany and Japan never led to the hint of a popular revolt, and indeed increased the popularity of both regimes. Air attacks against non-military targets in North Vietnam had zero coercive effect. In 1999, Slobodan Milosevic essentially ignored NATO air attacks until he came to believe that an invasion was in the works and the Russians told him the game was up. Finally, does anyone believe, and has anyone seriously argued, that more air strikes against Saddam Hussein’s regime would have toppled it, despite the fact that the Hussein regime was far less popular than the Islamic Republic?
Unfortunately, the fantasies of air power advocates often find their way into actual policy. This is because air power is intrinsically attractive to policymakers; it offers a cheap, inoffensive way of accomplishing foreign policy goals. The Clinton administration was addicted to air strikes, largely because it never felt assertive enough to order other kinds of action. This has been less of a problem for the Bush administration, but as the situations in both Iraq and Iran grow more impossible, airstrikes will look better and better. If the administration falls for it (and, really, what idiotic policies haven’t they undertaken?), then the situation will get much, much worse.