To the Editor:
In “Thinking About the Unthinkable in the Middle East” [December 1998], Gabriel Schoenfeld brilliantly dissects the underlying factors in the regional drive toward nuclearization and their implications. He aptly notes that Israel’s quest for the bomb has been exclusively motivated by defensive considerations rather than by hegemonic aspirations; that Israel’s perceived nuclear status has imparted “a measure of stability to the world’s most volatile region”; that the attainment of nuclear weapons by such “rogue states” as Iran and Iraq is in the offing; and that such a development would not only endanger Middle Eastern stability but could also pose a real threat to the United States itself. Hence the significance of his conclusion that while “Israel’s own nuclear arsenal has never been so crucial a part of its armament as it is right now,” it will be a wasting asset against military disaster “unless measures are taken to halt the Middle East’s rogue states in their nuclear tracks, or to protect against their certain depredations.”
The importance of these observations cannot be overstated. At a time when there is international reluctance to participate in sanctions against Iran; when the economic and political cordon sanitaire around Iraq has been decisively loosened, as indicated, inter alia, by the lukewarm international response to Operation Desert Fox; and when a phony linkage between the decade-long Gulf crisis and the vicissitudes of the Palestinian problem has been firmly established in world public opinion, there is a very real risk that the international community will look in the wrong direction in its efforts to contain the nuclearization of the Middle East.
Indeed, for quite some time Israel’s nuclear program has been singled out as both the foremost catalyst of regional proliferation and the main stumbling block on the road to Arab-Israeli peace. This thesis is fundamentally misconceived. The Arab-Israeli conflict is neither the sole nor even the main source of instability in the Middle East. A string of political, ethnic, religious, socioeconomic, and territorial disputes has transformed the region into one of the most volatile in the world, giving its various states more than enough reasons to arm themselves to the teeth irrespective of Israel’s activities. Indeed, the historical record shows no linkage between Israel’s nuclear program and similar regional endeavors. Iran’s nuclear quest, for example, which began well before the creation of the Islamic republic, was an offspring of Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi’s hegemonic aspirations. And Iraq’s mid-1970’s decision to embark on the same route came in direct response to the Iranian, not the Israeli, threat.
Since none of these programs was triggered by Israel’s nuclear program, and none is primarily retained with the Israeli threat in mind, they are not something that can be negotiated away in return for Israel’s nuclear disarmament. Having spent billions of dollars on nuclear development, the ayatollahs in Teheran are unlikely to shelve their nuclear ambitions, even if Israel were to be disarmed tomorrow; nor will Saddam Hussein, for whom nuclear weapons have always been the ultimate guarantee of his personal rule, relinquish them even if Israel ceased to exist.
Even worse, if Israel were to do the unthinkable and decide on unilateral denuclearization, it would only increase the appeal of non-conventional weapons to other regional states, since there would be no comparable system to deter the deployment, and even employment, of such weapons. This, in turn, would deal a mortal blow to the nascent Arab-Israeli peace process. If there is one overriding reason why Arabs and Israelis are now prepared to engage in peaceful negotiations over the resolution of their hundred-years’ war, it is the recognition of the futility of armed force as a foreign-policy instrument. This is a peace born of grudging disillusionment, not of mutual love and affinity; and Israel’s nuclear arsenal has played a decisive, if tacit, role in producing this state of mind. Remove this critical factor from the regional strategic equation and the entire peace process will collapse like a house of cards.
So where does all this leave us? Mr. Schoenfeld is undoubtedly correct to advocate a redoubled international effort “to halt the Middle East’s rogue states in their nuclear tracks.” Not because of their inherent irrationality; for, contrary to the commonplace view, such states have acted in a perfectly rational way. Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons, for example, though devoid of any moral inhibitions, as shown by the indiscriminate gassing of hapless civilians in Kurdistan, has always been carefully calculated, taking place where there was absolutely no risk of retaliation. Rather, it is precisely the ruthless rationality of the Middle East’s dictatorial/totalitarian regimes that makes their possession of nuclear weapons all the more dangerous. In a political system where absolute leaders supersede state institutions and the notion of national interest is highly personalized; where power is often concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority group (e.g., the Alawites in Syria or the Sunnis in Iraq); where no orderly mechanisms for political participation and peaceful transfer of power exist; and where the goal of regime survivability supersedes everything else, physical force has become the foremost mode of political discourse: from civil strife, to interstate wars, to domestic repression. Should such rulers and/or regimes deem themselves to be in mortal danger, they would have no scruples about resorting to nonconventional means, including nuclear weapons, whether against their own population or against external enemies.
Yet while the containment of Middle Eastern nuclear proliferation is certainly a necessary condition for regional stability, it may not be a sufficient one unless accompanied by real progress toward regional reconciliation. As has been demonstrated in the context of East-West relations, significant reductions in armaments follow superpower détente, not the other way around. Where hostility is intense and distrust is great, the prospects for massive reductions in weaponry remain slim. In the case of the Arab-Israeli conflict, or for that matter the Iraqi-Iranian rivalry, the political aspects of the dispute need to be seriously addressed before investing significant efforts in getting the parties to reduce their arsenals.
Only when a stable and comprehensive settlement to the Arab-Israeli dispute has been reached, comprising the second tier of protagonists such as Iraq, Libya, Algeria, and (non-Arab) Iran, and given ample time to prove its endurance and to produce a genuine sea change of sentiments and attitudes at the grass-roots level, can far-reaching arms-control regimes in the Middle East be negotiated and established. This may take a generation or more. But the alternative is too horrendous to contemplate.
Efraim Karsh
King’s College
University of London
London, England
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To the Editor:
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s implicit nuclear deterrent has served Israel very well for more than 30 years, but Gabriel Schoenfeld is right to sound the alarm. As Iraq and Iran move closer to becoming nuclear powers, Israeli policy needs to be, and is being, reexamined. Since a posture of ambiguity is a central element in that policy, the debate that is now being conducted among Israeli decision-makers may not get much media attention, but this does not mean that the changes in the security environment and the dangers are being ignored.
At its core, this debate is about the relative strengths and weaknesses of deterrence and defensive strategies, and how best to combine them. As Mr. Schoenfeld notes, the Arrow ballistic-missile defense system should provide a short-term and limited shield against SCUD-era missiles, but it would not be likely to protect Israeli cities were the other states in the region to launch a large number of SCUD’s in a single salvo, or acquire more advanced delivery systems that can defeat terminal-defense systems such as the Arrow.
Boost-phase intercept (BPI) technology, if successful, would have the advantage of combining a high degree of defense with deterrence. By destroying offensive systems early in their flights, BPI would inflict a heavy penalty on aggressor states. When an outgoing missile is hit by a BPI system, the warhead (nuclear, chemical, or biological) falls back onto the territory of origin. Fail-safe devices can reduce the probability of a nuclear detonation, but the damage from the radioactive material or chemical/biological agents in the warheads would be significant. At the same time, the effort to launch a first strike would lead to an immediate and massive counterstrike. As a result, an effective BPI system would force rational decision-makers to think twice before launching missiles.
The main problem (beyond the assumption that adversaries will be rational) is that BPI is not much more than an attractive concept at this stage, and there are formidable obstacles to its development and deployment. The U.S. airborne laser program (ABL) has yet to demonstrate that lasers of sufficient power can damage missiles in flight, but even if this could be done, the ABL itself would be highly vulnerable to an enemy first strike. The Israeli concept, based on multiple unmanned airborne vehicles (UAV’s) carrying small and very accurate missiles, may be more feasible in terms of the technology, but would require the continuous presence of a large number of UAV’s always on station within striking distance (tens of kilometers, at most) of potential ballistic-missile launch sites. Since ground-based mobile launchers can be placed just about anywhere, and are hard to find (as the U.S. military discovered during the Gulf war), UAV-based systems may also not solve the problem.
This leaves deterrence, which may be the least bad of the available options in the “new” Middle East. Over the past three decades, it seems to have brought the Arab world, one state at a time, to the realization that military attempts to destroy Israel would be futile and suicidal. Despite their rhetoric, Arab and even Iranian leaders have acted rationally in stopping short of a full-scale confrontation with Israel. Saddam Hussein fired about 40 conventional missiles at Israel, but he was careful to avoid using a single chemical warhead. The evidence indicates that while Saddam calculated (correctly) that he and his regime would survive U.S. air attacks, he also calculated that he would not survive an Israeli counterattack.
At the same time, the inherent difficulties in developing an explicit survivable second-strike deterrent force, and maintaining stability in a Middle East of many nuclear powers, should not be underestimated. The concept of mutual assured destruction (MAD) was problematic enough during the cold war, with two powers, separated by thousands of miles. Academics are still debating whether the world survived because of MAD, or despite it. In the Middle East, the distances are much smaller, the level of conflict and hatred more intense, and the number of actors would be greater than two. The leaders may be rational in terms of seeking to avoid national and personal suicide, but the potential for miscalculation, given the extent of misperception and distortion, is very high.
The optimal solution would be to prevent, or at least delay, the need to make these decisions for as long as possible, by blocking the Iraqi and Iranian nuclear programs. Perhaps ten or twenty more years would bring about political changes in the region that would obviate Israel’s requirement for a strategic policy based on deterrence and massive retaliation. However, with the passivity of the Clinton administration in the face of the flow of Russian technology to Iran, and Saddam Hussein’s triumphant return to the Middle East stage, the option of technological denial is rapidly disappearing. Having acquired ballistic-missile technology, Iran is now only a few years away from becoming a nuclear power, with the assistance of the Russian atomic energy ministry. As a result, Israeli leaders and decision-makers (from the Left and Right—on this issue alone, policy is above politics) are indeed “thinking about the unthinkable,” and attempting to define and implement the least bad of the available options. In this sense, the transition from ambiguous deterrence to a policy based on the combination of strategic defense and assured second-strike deterrence has already begun.
Gerald Steinberg
BESA Center for Strategic
Studies
Bar Ilan University
Ramat Gan, Israel
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To the Editor:
In “Thinking About the Unthinkable in the Middle East,” Gabriel Schoenfeld says much of value about military threats to Israel, but more remains to be said. Mr. Schoenfeld mentions that during the 1973 Yom Kippur war, the U.S. placed its forces on a global alert to counter the Soviet Union’s threat of sending its own forces to the Middle East. This key decision by President Nixon was derided by liberals as an attempt to divert attention from Watergate. Desperately needed munitions were ordered to Israel by Nixon, whom most Jews had voted against. The supplies were flown in C5A’s, planes that liberals opposed as too expensive and unreliable. After other “allies” refused landing rights, the planes refueled in Portugal, which liberals deemed too undemocratic to be our ally. Thus, Israel was saved by persons and policies that liberals and most American Jews opposed.
Fast-forward to the present. Israel and the U.S. have no defense against strategic missiles. This lack is especially critical for Israel, where one nuclear blast would devastate a major portion of the tiny nation. In 1992 and again in 1996, most American Jews voted for President Clinton, who, until his recent conversion, opposed building a missile-defense system, and who has drastically cut our military forces while demoralizing them with incessant deployments.
Opposition to the use of force against aggressive dictators and to self-defense against nuclear missiles is contrary to Jewish values as well as to common sense. Israel was lucky in 1973; it may not be so lucky again.
David C. Stolinsky
Los Angeles, California
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Gabriel Schoenfeld writes:
I had hoped that one of my correspondents might point to ways in which my analysis was overdrawn, or show how, for reasons I had not considered, Israel’s position is not as perilous as I had made it out to be in my article. Alas, Efraim Karsh and Gerald Steinberg, both highly knowledgeable in this sensitive area, appear to agree that things are very bad and likely to get worse.
Both Mr. Karsh and Mr. Steinberg refer to the debate now under way in Israel about how to deal with the ballistic-missile threat. I tend to agree with Mr. Karsh that it would be a mistake for Israel to move toward a more explicit posture of nuclear deterrence. The costs in Israel’s relationship with the United States would certainly be great and little would be gained in the Arab world, except, as Mr. Karsh points out, to inject the nuclear question into already inflamed Arab politics. It is interesting to note in this connection that Avner Cohen, who in his Israel and the Bomb criticizes Israel’s policy of nuclear “opacity,” nevertheless opposes any abrupt change on the grounds that it would “damage Israel’s greatly improved position in the region and the world, and could generate pressure on Israel to give up nuclear weapons entirely.”
The more fundamental issue, of course, is not Israel’s declaratory posture, but the situation on the ground. Israel’s position in the region can hardly be said to be improving as it becomes ever more vulnerable to missile attack.
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