Graham Allison, head of the Belfer Center at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is the author of one of the classic studies of public policy making, published in book form as Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971). While provocative and theoretically important, Allison's retrospective analysis of the Cuban missile crisis doesn't necessarily help us understand contemporary foreign policy situations.
Consider, for example, the challenge posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose geopolitical situation has been vastly improved, albeit inadvertently, by the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran seems determined to develop its own nuclear weapons. Israel's Binjamin Netanyahu seems equally determined to prevent that from happening by conducting a surgical strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. So far, the U.S. has managed to restrain our Israeli allies, but we have been less successful in convincing Russia and China to support strong U.N. sanctions against Iran.
Allison has recently developed a set of exercises designed to simulate the way that Iran's quest to join the nuclear club is likely to play out over the next twelve months. The lesson, according to David Ignatius in today's Post, is that "the simulated world of December 2010 looks ragged and dangerous."
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