The Policy We Don't Have

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been in the news the last two days because he wrote a secret three page memorandum admitting that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy on Iran. (NYT, April 18, 19)

The policy that we don’t have as to Iran’s presumptive quest for nuclear weapons is the same policy that we don’t have as to the long term aim to reach zero nuclear weapons world-wide. The missing policy is a policy to replace force based security with security through enforced law. President Obama champions the goal of nuclear zero, but does not dare assert that it cannot be reached by arms reductions and non-proliferation treaties alone, as essential as they may be to assist the process.

Dependable security requires not just nuclear zero but war zero. Before Iran and a good many other nations including the United States will substitute security through enforced law in place of weapons superiority, an alternative security mechanism must exist. This will necessitate the same components as all nations depend on for domestic security - administrative, judicial, and police resources, but on an international scale. And, before it will be safe to empower international law enforcement institutions, global democracy must be erected adequate to make the power holders accountable.

In 1949, just before the Cold War began, Democrats and Republicans alike anticipated the United Nations evolving into such an institution. 111 co-sponsors in the House and 21 in the Senate favored concurrent resolutions stating that it should be a “fundamental objective” of U.S. foreign policy to develop the U.N. into a “world federation, open to all nations, with defined and limited powers adequate to preserve peace and prevent aggression through the enactment, interpretation, and enforcement of world law.”

The co-sponsors included Republicans Jacob Javits, Christian Herter, Gerald Ford, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., and Democrats John F. Kennedy, Henry Jackson, Abraham Ribicoff, Mike Mansfield, Hubert Humphrey, John Sparkman, Lister Hill, and Russell Long.

Frantic preoccupation with military force will not permit even the best of today’s Congress Members to offer such leadership. They would be vilified and lose their seats at the next election. This is why the initiative must come from another power base. The only power base in sight unless one controls a media empire or has a billion dollars, is our cities and towns. As the targets of WMD attack by terrorists on in the event of war, they have the right to be heard. They also are within the political reach of citizens world-wide, as national governments are not. Gates is right - we have no policy for Iran. Iran does however have cities and towns that cities and towns in other nations might reach.