The Foreign Service Journal, April 2007

thetic about Mr. Kent’s ordeal. I think Mr. Kent and the rest of us would pre- fer a few years of legal headaches to a life of never being able to walk again. Some perspective, please. John Fleming FSO Embassy Tokyo Iran: What About Containment? French President Jacques Chirac recently said that the world could bet- ter live with an Iranian atom bomb than go to war to prevent its develop- ment. He quickly retracted his state- ment as much of the world went wild with criticism, and his evaluation of the situation has virtually vanished from consideration. But the French are noted for their perceptive political vision. Speaking as a retired FSO with experience as a counselor of embassy in the Arab world and as deputy direc- tor of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, I think Chirac’s assessment is worthy of seri- ous reflection despite the controversy it has aroused. His view is in close alignment with a recent article by Joe Klein on how to deal with Iran and its leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which was the most focused and thoughtful prescription I’ve yet read. When George Kennan wrote his famous paper on containment as the best way to deal with Soviet expan- sionism, the USSR had achieved vir- tual parity with the U.S. in both arma- ments and delivery systems. Who would have thought that 50 years later we’d be sitting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Group of Eight meetings? Even if Iran and North Korea succeed in producing half a dozen primitive atomic bombs, how can we be more concerned about the possibility of one or more of them falling in the hands of terrorists than having half our country annihilated by L E T T E R S 8 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 7