Pakistan Relation With Iran Slideshare
Roxanna Fitting
From a Realist point of view, the scenario of Iran being a nuclear power is simply acceptable if not desirable. Rather than singling out the Iranian nuclear program, Institutionalism would opt for a policy approach that strengthens the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and envisions achieving a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. From the perspective of the Copenhagen School, rather than blowing the Iranian nuclear program out of proportion by dealing with it as if it constituted a major security threat to global peace, the international community should desecuritize the issue by ceasing to demonize it and setting it in perspective with the Middle Eastern security complex as a whole. The differences in advice of the three schools of thought notwithstanding, their discussion produces synergetic effects which generate ideas that put into question the political wisdom not only of Trump but also of his antagonists in the recent history of Western politics, these being the political leaders of China, France, Germany, the European Union, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the USA under then President Barack Obama who had negotiated and signed the nuclear deal with Iran.
Moreover, if Iran acquired nuclear weaponry, Realists would expect the regime in Tehran to de-radicalize rather than to provide terrorist organizations with nuclear weapons (Waltz 2012). The reason is that nuclear states are aware of the destructive potential of nuclear weapons and are therefore reluctant to share them with actors that are not fully under their control. Once having gained access to the rather exclusive club of nuclear powers, states tend to defend the exclusivity of the club, which consists of only nine members, five of which are recognized by the NPT (China, France, Russia, the UK, and the USA) and four who are not (India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan).
The Copenhagen School differs from the two Rationalist schools presented above insofar as it is embedded in Social Constructivist thinking according to which security threats are not objectively given. Rather, whether and to what degree states and societies feel threated by arsenals held by other states depends on the quality of the relationship they hold with them. An arsenal controlled by a state with whom the relationship follows a Kantian logic of friendship will not be considered threatening. If the relationship is based on a Lockean logic of rivalry, the threat perception may be moderate only. If, however, the relationship follows a Hobbesian logic of enmity, threat perception will be pronounced (Wendt 1992).
Nuclear militarization in the Middle East is a case par excellence of securitization as conceptualized by the Copenhagen School. Securitization is an extreme version of politicization. In distinction to politicization, securitization is in effect when an issue is dramatized as a matter of utmost urgency that requires special actions beyond the routines of daily politics (Buzan et al. 1998: 26; Williams 2003). Many politicians and political observers, particularly from the West, tend to securitize the potential nuclear arsenal of Iran but not so the actual arsenal of Israel.
The Copenhagen School enriches the debate on the issue of Middle Eastern military nuclearization by applying insights of Social Constructivism. The Copenhagen-inspired idea of simultaneously launching a policy of re-politicization (of the issue of the Israeli nuclear program) and desecuritization (of the issue of the Iranian nuclear program) embeds Rationalist ideas of Realism and Institutionalism in a Social Constructivist setting and thus creates a synthesized approach. In other words, the securitization approach as applied to the issue of military nuclearization in the Middle East learns from both Realism and Institutionalism what concrete issue should be de-dramatized and politicized in what way. In particular, Waltz (2012), Walt (2015), and Bahgat (2015) clarify that there are no good arguments for constructing a nuclear Iran as an existential threat for Israel. The ideological fundaments of the Islamic Republic of Iran are hostile to Israel but there are no indicators that the regime in Tehran is an apocalyptic rider that prioritizes the destruction of Israel over its own survival. If Iran acquired nuclear bombs, it would at most have very low incentives to wage a nuclear war on Israel, as Israel is a nuclear power itself that could and would retaliate.
Moreover, there is no good reason to believe that the regime in Tehran should not be aware that the USA would not refrain from a regime-changing war on Iran even if for some extremely unlikely reasons the Israeli government failed to respond to an Iranian attack. In terms of political ethics, the Copenhagen School may learn from the Rationalist approaches that the Iranian regime notoriously violates moral standards in its foreign policies. However, the foreign policies of Western allies, including Israel, also offend standards of human rights. Moreover, major deficits of the Iranian regime in terms of democratic rights notwithstanding, the Iranian political system is much more open and provides its citizens with more options of political participation than Arab Western allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Thus, as Walt (2015) argues, it would serve American (and European) self-interest, but also be ethically preferable, if relations to Iran were normalized.
Niblett, Robin, Thomas Gomart, Daniela Schwarzer, and Nathalie Tocci (2018), Europe should defend the Iran deal without burning bridges to the US, Chatham House, May 18, -should-defend-iran-deal-without-burning-bridges-us?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIzuHjlNa33AIVDT4bCh0zCQLNEAMYASAAEgIxQfD_BwE.
Martin Beck currently serves as Professor at the Institute for Political Science at the Saint Joseph University (USJ) in Beirut, Lebanon. He is also affiliated with the University of Southern Denmark (SDU). His main research interests are international relations and the political economy of the Middle East, in particular regional power relations, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, oil politics and comparative analyses of rentier states. He is co-editor of Oil and the political economy in the Middle East: Post-2014 adjustment policies of the Arab Gulf and beyond (Manchester University Press, 2021). In 2020, he served as co-guest editor for the special section Fluctuating Regional (Dis-)Order in the Middle East published in Global Policy 11(1). You can follow him on ResearchGate and on twitter @martinbeck23.
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