Israel fears the Iranian bomb, but not for the reasons they claim

 Israel fears an Iranian nuclear bomb, and well they should. But not for the reasons they claim. Iran will not be throwing atom bombs at Israel as soon as it builds one, however tempting that might be.

Watching the “Iran wants a Bomb to Destroy Israel” show, it is easy to believe that they would, indeed, use such a weapon if they had one. After all, the US built the bomb and then used it on Japan, twice. It ended a war, and ended ‘history’ for Japan in the form of the all-powerful imperial household and emperor. Bombs were made from dropping, and that’s just what they’ll do, etc. 

 

But I think we are missing an important point. Bombs also created eighty years of peace. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the only atomic bombs dropped on any country by another in anger. 

 

Khruschev is famous for pounding the table with his shoe and saying, “We will bury you”. As an adversary, that seems like fighting talk, and it would be pretty scary to let such a country get the bomb. Surely, as soon as the Soviet Union started building bombs, they would attack and destroy European countries and the US. Surely, the United States should have used their bombs to stop any Soviet bomb development programme, and to destroy any nuclear capability before it could become a real threat. 

General MacArthur was reported to want to use the atomic bomb to stop China in Korea. That didn't happen. Strategic considerations stayed the hand, including the taboo associated with the use of atomic weapons. Withholding the bombs further reduced the potential for an adversary to use atomic weapons as a first or early resort.

 

But Russia (the Soviet Union) did build the bomb, and the US 'let' them. Who did they drop it on? No one to date. They built thousands of bombs. So did the US. And then the UK, France, and China. Then Israel, India, and Pakistan. Most recently, North Korea entered the club. What do each of these have in common? 

 

Each country that has demonstrated nuclear weapons capability has done so as a deterrent. Not one of these countries, so far, has built a bomb and then used it on their declared primary enemy. Even Pakistan and India, having fought at least two wars and innumerable skirmishes over the past fifty years (not to mention their violent divorce in 1948 upon gaining independence from the UK), have only ‘used’ their bombs as highly visible deterrents. 

 

Why didn’t they use their bombs as soon as they were developed and tested? 

 

Throughout the Cold War, the doctrine of “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD) ensured that countries with the capability to destroy each other had a stronger incentive to engage in dialogue rather than conflict. This did not stop competition in their and the other’s spheres of influence. Nor did it stop proxy wars from raging around the world. The Soviet Union bled the US dry in Vietnam, and later the US returned the favour in Afghanistan. 

 

Other than a few well-documented cases of potential accidental escalation, and the very real escalation of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union and the US (and NATO member countries) never came close to open conflict. MAD worked. 

 

Iran will gain the bomb. And they will have the capability to deliver that bomb to Israel. Just as Pakistan and India both have nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them. Just as Israel has nuclear weapons and delivery capability. 

 

Israel fears an Iranian bomb. Just as they told us to fear the “Muslim Bomb” when Pakistan built and tested theirs. 

Israel’s real fear is not that Iran will start lobbing bombs, but that Israel will lose the military upper hand and will be forced to negotiate with Iran and other countries. Israel does not want to negotiate with anyone. Negotiation implies a level of, if not equality, then at least recognition. Negotiation implies that both parties have something to bring, and both have something(s) to give up. 

MAD will come to the Middle East, whether Israel wants it to or not, and they very much do not want it to arrive. When Israel starts their next war, and they have started too many or engineered the conditions to start their wars, it will have a completely different set of calculations to make.

Israel will no longer be able to commit war crimes with impunity. The Liquidation of the Gaza Ghetto will be more difficult in a MAD world. Israelis will no longer be able to blithely ignore the suffering they are causing, the genocide happening in their name and with their support. Equality is what Israel fears, and the obligations and limitations that equality will impose on their murderous philosophy.

Over the past two weeks, Iran has proven that it can breach the Iron Dome. Not with every missile, and in fact with few, but they have landed meaningful hits on Israeli cities. As Israel improves their Iron Dome, so will Iran, probably with the help of its allies such as Russia, North Korea, Pakistan, and others, improve their missile technology and their ability to evade the Iron Dome. Israel is faced with a new order.

 

An Iranian bomb will alter the power dynamic from overwhelming Israeli power to a more ambiguous power relationship, and with that, the imperative to negotiate.

I suspect "G*d's Chosen People" are more afraid of having to negotiate than they have ever been scared of fighting.

For that reason, bring on the Iranian Bomb.

75 years since the first H-Day

August 6, 2020

Today is the 75th anniversary of the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the first of only two times a nuclear bomb has been used in ‘anger’. For many years I’ve sent out a “Happy H-Day” to Peter (and sometimes other) on this day. In part it makes fun (gallows humour) but my real point is to remind that the atomic bomb was used to stop a war, and ultimately to avoid the seaboard invasion of the Japanese Homeland at the end of the Second World War.

In making light of the bombing of Hiroshima, I certainly was crass and insensitive. But I also took pains to point out that, while we judge the use of the bomb from a position of many decades of peace, the reality of the decision-making at the time was much different, and the use of the bomb was justified. Casualty estimates were as high as 1 million American dead and 3 million Japanese or more. And with the experience on Okinawa and other islands, the estimates of Japanese deaths was probably very low, even if the estimate of American death is high.

There has been too much discussion about the ethics of using the bomb in the first place. I think that has been misplaced. The ethics of wholesale bombing of civilian populations in the pursuit of strategic exhaustion of the enemy is another topic, of which the use of the atomic bomb is a subset. We now accept as a given (and it should be noted that this has been the case since the first Geneva Conventions) that attacks on civilian populations is a war crime. Yet in a time when ‘surgical’ strikes against industrial capacity were not possible, civilian “collateral damage” was inevitable.

We commemorate August 6th as the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, but we (outside Japan) ignore and if fact do not even remember the firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9-10 March 1945, which killed over 100,000 people and destroyed 16 square kilometres of the city. That was probably a bigger war crime than Hiroshima, in that incendiary attacks on cities cannot be reframed as anything other than attacks on civilians, as the objective is not to destroy industrial capacity, but destroy entire cities and kill and displace as many people as possible.

But enough of the moral equivalence for just a moment.

The very existence of the ability to produce and (threaten to) use atomic weapons has been a significant contributor to world peace for 75 years. I would nuance that by saying “developed world and European peace”, but only to point out that a new “World War” has been averted. Without the threat of escalation to atomic weapons, it would have been almost impossible to counter the overwhelming military might of the Soviet Union, and with that the defection or weakening of Western European countries in the 1950, ‘60s and beyond. 

Instead of fighting on land, sea and in the air, the world fought an economic war. In the process, countless people and countries saw their standard of living climb, infant mortality fall, and trade increase. And once the “West” (the US) had a dominating economic superiority, they could use that to drive the Soviet Union into an arms race that could only bankrupt the Soviet Union, ending the “cold war” and “defeating” Communism as a global threat.

Instead of attacking entire civilian populations, military technology now enables the targeting of individual automobiles from 10 miles away, using a “Ninja” missile fired from a circling drone that may have been loitering in the area for a day or more, waiting for just that moment. Planners no longer need to factor in estimates in the hundreds or even thousands of civilians killed to reach a particular “target”. They can now estimate how many other people will be in that car. 

Of course, nature, and international relations, abhors a void, and eventually the US, having “won” the cold war, was unable to continue to afford to keep winning the peace. Now the US finds itself on the Soviet Union side of the economic war equation, and the US is losing. This cannot bode well for global security and peace over the next five to ten years, but it is a natural evolution of economics and global power, and the cost of maintaining that position of power.

But I digress.

The use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and then on Nagasaki the following week, provides a punctuation mark between a pre-atomic era, and an era of much greater peace in the world. No, the world is not at peace and never has been. But the first half of the 20th century was the period in which industrial warfare and the demonstrated and executed strategic destruction of populations and countries was perfected. The use of the atomic bomb was simply the culmination of that evolution in strategic thinking, and in the execution of that strategic concept.

We should be celebrating (and commemorating) H-Day as the day that the world woke to the reality of the trajectory of strategic industrial war, and realised that there must be a better way. “Small wars” to destabilise the periphery, while horrible locally and to neighbouring countries, helped forestall a more general global conflagration. Continued testing of atomic weapons by ‘both sides’ (but of course including eight of the nine current members of the ‘atomic club’) has served as “Beware of the Dog” signs more than deployments for actual imminent use.

We should be celebrating the fact that two cities in Japan taught the world that strategic industrial population destruction is not only unacceptable, immoral, illegal, and repugnant, we should be celebrating that for each of the past 75 years (starting from the 10th of August, the day after Nagasaki) atomic weapons have not been used in anger. We should be acknowledging that the shock of demonstrated capability has, we continue to hope, brought an end of the period of such industrial slaughter. And we should be relieved that the horrendous loss of life that strategic industrial warfare accepted is no longer acceptable even in concept.

Without Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Herman Kahn’s question “Will the living will envy the dead?” would not have been asked. That question, even though his answer is uncomfortable to read and actually provides a defence of the future use of atomic weapons, demonstrated that leaders and peoples had moved beyond victory at any cost (to the enemy of course) to victory within an ‘acceptable’ cost. Specifically, industrial slaughter was, from the 10th of August 1945, off the table. 

May it remain off the table.

Happy H-Day.