The Uni­ver­si­ty Chan­nel has post­ed an infor­ma­tive debate over how to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambi­tions. It fea­tures two major experts — Ken Waltz (Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty) and Scott Sagan (Stan­ford) — who have had a long run­ning debate over ways to han­dle nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion in gen­er­al. You can catch the debate here in the fol­low­ing for­mats: MP3 audio — MP4 video — Stream­ing video — iTunes.

Below, you’ll find the Uni­ver­si­ty Chan­nel’s descrip­tion of the debate:

“In 1995, Scott Sagan and Ken­neth Waltz pub­lished their sem­i­nal work, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate.” They staked out oppo­site ends of the the­o­ret­i­cal spec­trum with Waltz argu­ing that “more [nuclear armed states] could be bet­ter” and Sagan respond­ing that “more will be worse.”

On Feb­ru­ary 8th, 2007 at SIPA, they updat­ed their famed debate in the con­text of Iran. Will a nuclear-armed Iran be a source of sta­bil­i­ty in the world, or will it bring the Mid­dle East to the brink of dis­as­ter?

Sagan and Waltz debate this ques­tion along with ques­tions on the appro­pri­ate U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy in the Gulf, the effi­ca­cy of sanc­tions in restrain­ing Iran­ian nuclear ambi­tions, the like­ly response of Iran’s neigh­bors and many oth­ers.

Scott Sagan is co-direc­tor of Stan­ford University’s Cen­ter for Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty and Coop­er­a­tion and served as a spe­cial assis­tant to the direc­tor of the orga­ni­za­tion of the Joint Chief of Staff in the Pen­ta­gon.

Ken­neth Waltz is one of the pil­lars of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal sci­ence and co-founder of the struc­tur­al real­ism the­o­ry of inter­na­tion­al rela­tions. He is a Senior Research Schol­ar at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty and a Ford pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at UC Berke­ley. ”

Open Source, an always insight­ful pub­lic radio pro­gram, aired last week a show that took a broad look at the win­ners and losers of the Iraq war. Tak­ing up a theme that was also recent­ly explored in an edi­tion of For­eign Pol­i­cy mag­a­zine, the host, Christo­pher Lydon, spoke with a pan­el of experts from respect­ed think tanks, uni­ver­si­ties, and news­pa­pers, and, togeth­er, they drew con­clu­sions about win­ners and losers, some of which aren’t so obvi­ous. Here’s a quick recap, but we rec­om­mend giv­ing the show a lis­ten (iTunes — Feed — Mp3) and tak­ing a look at its well-done blog.

Win­ners:

• Iran & Shi­ism: With Iraq, its tra­di­tion­al rival, in chaos, Iran is now free to project its pow­er across the Mid­dle East and tilt the bal­ance of region­al pow­er in favor of Shi­ite Islam. It’s part­ly because Iran is mak­ing such a strong show­ing that the hawks in Wash­ing­ton may feel the strate­gic need to even­tu­al­ly use mil­i­tary force against Iran. In this sense, the US is play­ing out a more extreme ver­sion of the strat­e­gy it used dur­ing the Iran-Iraq War that dragged on through the 1980s. Weak­en one pow­er, then the oth­er.
• Chi­na:  No one is notic­ing it now, but down the road, we might be writ­ing a his­to­ry that talks about how the US adven­ture in Iraq gave Chi­na the room to emerge rapid­ly as a new super­pow­er — a super­pow­er that could plau­si­bly present itself to the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty as more diplo­mat­ic and peace­ful than the US alter­na­tive.
• al-Qae­da: The Iraq war has helped al-Qaeda’s recruit­ment efforts, pre­cise­ly as many warned, and, if the US even­tu­al­ly aban­dons Iraq, they’ll feel embold­ened no doubt.
• Arab Dic­ta­tors: The heat had been ratch­eted up against many Mid­dle East dic­ta­tors, but with every­one dis­tract­ed by Iraq, they are able to per­pet­u­ate their cor­rupt rule for yet a while longer.
• Mul­ti-Lat­er­al­ism, Old Europe & the UN: They were all dis­missed by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion in the run up to the war, but they’re all look­ing bet­ter and more worth­while with each pass­ing day.

Losers:

• Iraq & The Unit­ed States: Two obvi­ous picks.
• Uni­lat­er­al­ism & The Neo-Cons: The neo-con approach has splen­did­ly dis­cred­it­ed itself, but the rub is that neo-cons still sit in pow­er and they may uni­lat­er­al­ly force their way into Iran before the peo­ple get to the bal­lot box again.
• Tony Blair & the Spe­cial Rela­tion­ship between the US and Eng­land: Tony Blair is say­ing his long good­bye. He’ll be gone before too long, and, with him, may go the only oth­er sub­stan­tial mem­ber of the “Coali­tion of the Will­ing.”
• The Price of Oil: It’s a los­er if you’re a con­sumer … but not if you’re an exec­u­tive at Exxon.

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