Dominoes anyone?

The metaphorical game in international relations is often chess, or escalation, or maybe just the adjectival “great” game.  But these days we seem to be playing that old standby, dominoes, more than anything else:  will Iran getting nuclear weapons lead to others getting them?  will Tunisia’s revolt spread? will North Korea’s erratic behavior precipitate in one way or another refugee flows into China that Beijing will want to prevent?

As Stephen Walt points out, revolutions don’t usually spread like wildfire.  The demonstration effect of what happens in Tunisia may be strong, but it is uncertain what the outcome is and therefore what events there will “demonstrate.”  I still wouldn’t call it a revolution, since the prior regime is very much in place, not only in the salubrious sense that the constitution is being implemented but in the less salubrious sense that the old guard remains in key offices.  Only the President and his coterie are gone.  Tunisia is looking for the moment more like a palace or military coup in response to popular uprising than like a real revolution. I can imagine that being imitated in more than one Arab country.

With respect to Iran and nuclear weapons, Johan Bergenas argues his case against the dominoes falling well, but unfortunately the argument against a nuclear Iran remains strong even without the worst case scenario, as he acknowledges.  While diplomats, spooks and geeks (or maybe I should say spoogeeks?) in the U.S. and Israel are chuckling over Stuxnet’s damage to Iranian centrifuges, the problem remains as great as always.  We just have more time to find, or not to find, a solution.  I’m no fan of Hillary Mann and Flynt Leverett’s triumphalist version of today’s Iran, but I also don’t buy Tehran Bureau’s defeatist version. President Ahmedinejad still looks pretty strong, having managed his personnel challenges to the Supreme Leader as well as his economic reforms and their political impact better than many expected.

China’s willingness to save our bacon with North Korea is but one of the Washington myths that Mort Abramowitz pooh-poohs, suggesting that if we had a clearer and more consistent policy of our own we might be better off than relying on Beijing to do the right thing.  In any event, the Chinese seem to be finding the discomfort that North Korea causes “not unwelcome,” as the diplomats say, and they fear more refugee flows arising from the regime change Washington might like than anything else.

So dominoes don’t look like such a good game, and in my experience they are not, being a Vietnam generation fogy.  That said, I feel reasonably certain that our weak response to North Korea’s nuclear testing has in fact encouraged the Iranians to move ahead to acquiring whatever technology they think they need to become at least a virtual nuclear power.  Did we ever deprive Brazil of its technology after it forswore nuclear weapons and signed the Treaty of Tlatelolco?  Or South Africa?

That is the thing about dominoes.  When they fall, the consequences are often irreversible, and the directions they fall in unpredictable.  I hope that the outcome of last week’s events in Tunisia is not only democratic but relatively liberal and Western-oriented.  Many of us–I include myself–will regret the cheering we did from the sidelines if Al Qaeda in the Maghreb finds haven in North Africa, where its recruiting efforts are already strong.