Self-indulgent silliness.  Harvard should be embarrassed at such puerility.

Ferguson, Victor Davis Hansen, the national greatness conservatives, and many less-known hawks want an imperialist war because they think that there's nothing wrong with war or imperialism and they want the US, during their lifetimes, to get in on the action and make history.

They realize that very few Americans accept this kind of thinking, but these men also reject the idea that national leaders should pay any attention to public opinion between elections. (Strauss helped here). They are also willing to use smears to destroy anyone, no matter how honorable, who stands in their way.

People who think this way hold influential places in government, in academia, and presumably in finance and industry.

As a result, we've had a two-tier debate on foreign policy, with the public debate just a screen for what's actually happening. Every once in awhile when I've been arguing against the Bush policy, someone says something like "John, you understand the policy quite well, you just don't like it". But the actual policy has never been advocated in public.

WWI was definitely a disaster politically, militarily and diplomatically.  However, what made it an example of pre-emptive war?

The trouble with the situation in Iran is that we have a dishonest incompetent president.  It is hard to know what to expect and what to believe.  

Does anyone really believe the world is going to let Iran with this Iranian president move toward a nuclear weapon?  What country other than perhaps China sees the advantage of doing nothing?

As for imperialism being by definition bad that is just not obvious.  Part of the problem in the post WWI middle east was that European Imperialism was substituted for Ottoman Imperialism.  If the Turks ruled the Middle East there might be no Israel but there certainly would be no Iraq or Saudi Arabia.

But it's still pretty much on topic. The Germans ended up attacking France because they thought that France would attack them while they were fighting Russia. And since they didn't see a way to beat France without taking over most of Belgium, they ended up bringing Britain into the war too. In effect, fear of a two-front war ended up causing a two-front war.

I think people need to calm down. Bush gave us the bum's rush on Iraq and we see how well that worked out. Bush would like to give us the bum's rush to violence again. It would divert attention from Libby, Rove, Abramhoff, Iraq, falling poll numbers, Katrina, cronyism, etc. Of course, the simple fact that it might wreck the world isn't really something he factors in. Calm down and work with the UN. How much power does this nutcase new president in Iran have anyway? Aren't the mullahs the real power? The world is right now putting up with Bush with a bomb. That's pretty scary considering at any time W might decide Jesus is telling him to use it. We must restrain our nutcases from doing anything rash again. If and when we get a rational government in DC that is a time we can hope for a rational response. The neo-cons responsible for the Iraq fiasco are giving us the full court press right now. Ken Adelman (of cakewalk fame) is on CNN right now saying he hopes for region change through subversion using MLK King tactics through covert action. Am I crazy or is all of this a bit obscene on MLK Day?

Oh the joys of academia! lol! Actually, I believe that academia finds itself relying on the creativity/ingenuity of people outside academia for their own elaborations.  I think that Howard Gardner might agree with me on this point. Maybe Anthony Giddens might too. 

Whenever I hear Fergussen prattle on about foreign affairs, I am struck by how unhelpful supposed experts can be in helping us to frame current affairs.  Fergussen is clearly drawn toward grand, sweeping, ideas and impatient with annoying details.  his is fine for cocktail conversation, but it is at best a distraction in the real world. 

Moreover, this article makes me wonder about his overall approach to historical scholarship.  His analysis seems self-evidently flawed to me, as I know a little about the issues he purports to be addressing in this article.  I wouldn't be similarily qualified to judge his historical works - I wonder whether these are riddled with questionable assumptions and agendas as well?

There's much that I disagree with Niall on (e.g. WWI) but his position is being completely misrepresented here. As I understand it he is saying that we should be cautious about assuming that life in a proliferated Middle East will turn out like the Cold War. Deterrence may not hold. In support of this position one could cite former sec def McNamara who is now on record as saying that MAD was deeply flawed and we lucked out in the Cold War. In fact, the more we know about the Cuban missile crisis the more we appreciate that the risk of inadvertent war was extremely high. There is also reason to believe that relations between a nuclear Iran, Israel, and maybe even a nuclear Saudi Arabia, will be even less stable. If this is a likely outcome perhaps it is preferable to take every step to avoid it. 
This is where matt really gets Niall's argument backwards. It is precisely allowing a nuclear Iran that could lead to a WWI conflagaration. A strike now, while bad in many ways, would nowhere near approximate that outcome. It's a minimax strategy-- minimizing worst case scenarios.
In any case, I don't expect this to be greeted by anything les than total partisan derision here but I would ask that you do address one question: why would deterrence necessarily work proliferated middle east given that it came close to failure in the cold war? 

I have a question:

 Fergusson made quite a series of "alternate history" predictions, one being that the first nuclear test by Iran was ignored.

Suppose that (a) the preventative war is really needed, and (b) we wait until Iran makes an actual nuclear test.   Political advantages of waiting seem to be much larger and certain than a hypothetical danger from hypothetical untested weapons.  If I recall, Pakistan got ony a fraction of the yield of Hiroshima's bomb, experimental bombs are not useful to arm rockets, and we can destroy Iranian airforce as the first thing after the test.

Perhaps if negotiations with Iran go nowhere, the fist step should be surrounding Iran with internationally staffed observation posts to measure and analyze seismic data, with the goal of having an objective and credible proof, would Iran make a nuclear test.   Sites in Turkey, Kuwait, Emirates, Oman, Afghanistan and Azerbaijan could be available.

War in Korea and 50 years of deploying tens of thousands of troops didn't prevent a nuclear Korea. 

If we'd have sent a few capable assassins into Iraq, bonked Saddam and left, "preventative war" would have been unnecessary - assuming, of coure, that getting rid of Saddam was the goal, which, equally of course, it wasn't.

In fact, if we'd simply ignored Saddam entirely (except for the UN monitoring his operations), the war would have been unncessary. 

"Preventative war" is NEVER necessary because war itself is NEVER necessary - IF you are smart enough.

Which obviously most of the US isn't, since we've spent the last hundred years at war with SOMEBODY on a daily basis...

And in fact, nothing about the Iranian situation requires war at all. Absolutely nothing. The Iranians don't have a bomb, they're not a threat to anybody even if they HAD a bomb (or several, compared to Israel's 100-400 and the US's X thousand), and there's still NO evidence they're even TRYING to GET a bomb (not that I assume they aren't, I assume they are - there's just no evidence yet.)

So why is ANYBODY talking about the need for war with Iran? L:et alone an "immediate crisis"? Iran breaks some seals on their reactor to resume some research and the enrichment of uranium - which they are allowed legally to do - and THIS is an "immediate crisis"? To whom? Obviously Israel. Who else?

Obviously the agenda is entirely different - but nobody here seems to want to talk about that, just as nobody here wants to talk about the agenda the neocons had for Iraq - until after Iraq was already a done deal.

Well, a year from now, when the US is embroiled in a hot war with Iran and US casualties are soaring into the thousands a month, you can all tell us how you were opposed to the war with Iran from the git-go.

A complete red herring argument.

First of all, McNamara's OPINION that MAD didn't work isn't necessarily a fact.

Second, while inadvertent war is possible, it's very hard to do. Usually, historically, one side or the other is itching for war. That was not the case with the US or Russia since both were well aware of the consequences. 

There is no evidence that Iran is itching for war with Israel - the hyperbole coming from the current government head in Iran is rhetoric on the scale of Bush's "axis of evil" crap and has no more to do with the REAL decisions being made behind the scenes than anything Bush says about "exporting democracy".

While Israel DOES covet controlling the entire Middle East as the mainstay of its Zionist political philosophy, there is no evidence - other than the entirely overkill nature of its nuclear buildup - that it has any intention of pre-emptively attacking any nation in the Middle East with nuclear weapons. If it did, it would have done so anytime in the last thirty years. Instead, it is waiting for the moment when it can be guaranteed that the United States will use its power to defend Israel form the rest of the world's reaction to such an attack. That time has not yet come - but it's closer now with the neocon fanatics in the White House than at any other time in history.

There is no evidence that Saudi Arabia would ever go against US wishes in attacking Israel with nuclear weapons.

An attack on Iran cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered a "minimax" scenario. That's utterly ridiculous. The net effect of an attack on Iran now would be to radicalize the Iranians, guarantee the development of nuclear weapons by Iran and everybody else, destablize the entire region, and  start a hot war which will last several years and cost hundreds of thousand of civilian and military casualties (the Iran-Iraq war cost over a million lives on each side), not to mention another trillion dollars off the US economy, and probably a spike in oil prices to $100-200 a barrel, which would devastate the already fragile US economy.

And for what? To prevent the Iranians from getting A bomb - or five or ten? When Israel has 200-400? And hasn't had to use them in thirty years?

Finally, nobody is saying that deterrence NECESSARILY is going to work.

We're saying that deterrence HAS worked - war won't, bu definition.

And as I've said elsewhere, even if there IS a nuclear conflict between Iran and Israel sometime in the next thirty years, why does the US care if the the oil fields aren't destroyed? Israel has no oil. Israel covets the oil fields of the Middle East. Who's going to attack the oil fields? As long the oil flows (or the US gets its head out of its butt and develops alternative energy), who cares if Israelis and Iranians kill each other? Does that mean WE have to kill Iranians NOW?

What's wrong with this picture? 

If you're an American, you have no business talking about attacking ANY other country unless THIS country is directly attacked FIRST (OR it is iron-clad guaranteed that we are ABOUT to be attacked FIRST). It's that simple. Anything else is imperialism.

An interesting suggestion, but basically irrelevant.

Irrelevant because you're assuming that there is any real rational desire here on the part of the main actors to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapons program

This is all a smokescreen.  The only beneficiary of this entire discussion is Israel.

Iran NEEDS a nuclear energy program - that much has been established. But it is completely ignored by the West.

Iran DESIRES a nuclear weapons program - this has NOT been established by ANY evidence, but is in my opinion more or less self-evident. As long as Israel can threaten everybody in the Middle East with 200-400 nuclear weapons, every nation near it is obviously under threat of preemptive nuclear attack.

These same nations have also seen the West totally ignore Israel's nuclear weapons program. The IAEA has barely even mentioned it in the past. It's obvious to everybody that the US wants Israel to have nuclear weapons, and it's obvious to everybody that Israel intends to build enough nuclear weapons that it can eventually dominate the entire Middle East via nuclear blackmail - as soon as it can get the US to be willing to commit to its defense against the rest of the world's reaction to such a blackmail. If the US didn't have the money, military  and nuclear weapons itself to be a threat to Israel, Israel probably would already have done this.

I mean, why does Israel NEED 200-400 nuclear weapons? Just how many military strategic targets exist in Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia that Israel needs to hit any time soon? When they have the best trained, best equipped (with US billions), most effective military force in the Middle East? If Israel is ever invaded, do they intend to drop TWO HUNDRED nuclear weapons on their OWN soil to repel an invasion? Think about it. Does anybody really believe that Israel needs TWO HUNDRED nuclear weapons to DEFEND itself from its neighbors? When they fly their jets unopposed over the home of the Syrian President whenever they want to?

Therefore it's not relevant whether Iran is going to test or not, or whether they're going to build one bomb or ten or whatever.

What is relevant is that the Israelis intend to prevent them from building ANY bomb and cannot do so without the direct military assistance of the United States.

What is relevant is that the neocon fanatics in the US are building up the case against Iran in exactly the same manner they did with Iraq.

What is relevant is that even most people who call themselves "progressives" are acting like Iran's EVENTUAL possession of a nuclear weapon is something to be so concerned about that it is legitimate to discuss the concept of pre-emptively attacking Iran NOW.

What is relevant is that Israel intends to attack Iran - with US assistance - sometime in the next three to six months (time frame depending on how fast the US can build support for the notion that Iran is a "pariah immediate nuclear threat" - which is preceding swimmingly at this point as any cursory look at the daily papers can tell you, just as it was before the attack on Iraq.)

While you are completely correct that the West has numerous options in dealing with Iran, NONE of them are being seriously considered.

What IS being seriiously considered is a hot war with Iran within the next three to six months.

That's the bottom line.

That's what needs to be dealt with right now.

As I've said before, progressives in the US need to have a concentrated campaign RIGHT NOW to pressure Congress to pass legislation explicitly preventing the President from initiating or supporting ANY military action against Iran without an express authorization from Congress - preferably an express declaration of war by Congress - and preventing the President from using nuclear weapons against ANY non-nuclear nation without the express authorization of Congress. 

... because of oil, the neo-cons, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Rummy, Rice, and others with their own particular agendas. They exploited the fears of traumatized post-9/11 Americans to do what they wanted to do for a variety of reasons none of which they would use publicly, so they cooked up WMD as the best marketing strategy.

I was not "assuming" in the sense "taking for granted" but in the sense "if, then".  If our goal is to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, we can take steps that are preventative and yet not threatening, or, more precisely, preparing for credible conditional threats in the case Iran would get the weapons.

The other point is that the days when we could credibly say "our intelligence proves that" are over so we need to think about other arguments.

 By the way, where you got the number "200-400 nuclear weapons" in the possession of Israel?  I am not familiar with it.

Israel covets the oil fields of the Middle East. - Hack

Israel surrendered the Sinai oil fields in 1979, which at the time made it self-sufficient, in exchange for a peace treaty with Egypt.

What Israel covets is security. Like many people who grow up in violent neighborhoods, it doesn't know how to engage in relationships without threatening or bullying, and it doesn't see how such behavior actually damages its own security interests. But it doesn't covet the oil fields of the Middle East - not when its per capita GDP is multiples higher than those of the Arab oil states.

Other than that, I agreed with most of your post.

The conjuncts are independent. You can't logically derive "the soviet union invades Poland" from "the U.S. takes back diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union," nor vice versa. It is possible for one to cause the other -- but of course, that is what the calculation of probabilities is set up to quantify.