trevster2k
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
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- Jan 17, 2001
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Another POV
Seeking Invulnerability
By Gwynne Dyer
The three most ill-considered (and probably doomed) political
enterprises on the international political scene today are the Israeli
assault on Lebanon, the US campaign to force Iran to renounce its alleged
nuclear weapons programme, and the similar campaign that has been mounted
against North Korea. What common theme unites these three enterprises?
The quest for invulnerability for one side, at the expense of total
vulnerability for the other.
Between 1945 and about 1970, the United States went through one of
the most difficult intellectual and emotional transitions in history. The
US began that period as the home of almost half the world's surviving
industrial capacity and the sole possessor of the ultimate weapon, the
atomic bomb. It was unchallengeable and invulnerable. Yet by 1970 it was
ready to concede nuclear weapons parity to the Soviet Union, an openly
hostile totalitarian state, and was negotiating arms-control agreements
that limited missile numbers but guaranteed the Soviets the ability to
destroy the United States.
That was logical and necessary, because you couldn't stop the
Russians from building more and bigger nuclear weapons. America's military
thinkers had grasped the essential fact that no number of nuclear weapons
on their side, however large, could stop an enemy with the ability to
deliver even a few hundred nukes from effectively destroying their country.
The enemy would also be destroyed by US retaliation, of course, so
let's work with that fact. Let us stabilise the US-Soviet relationship by
accepting this unavoidable situation of mutual vulnerability -- Mutual
Assured Destruction (MAD), as one critic of the policy named it -- and even
enshrining it in international treaties. It made good strategic sense, and
it may well have saved the world from a nuclear war.
Accepting America's vulnerability was so emotionally repugnant that
many leading politicians and generals spent the rest of their careers
promoting new technologies like "Star Wars" that they hoped might restore
US invulnerability, but most of the US political and military elite had the
wisdom and maturity to support the policy. America could use their like
today. So could Israel.
Israel's period of invulnerability began later, after the 1973 war,
and has lasted far longer. No combination of Arab armies can defeat Israel
in war, or even inflict major casualties on it. And should Israeli
generals ever prove so incompetent that Arab armies did make a little
headway, Israel still has its regional nuclear weapons monopoly forty years
after developing the things. (America lost its own nuclear monopoly after
only four years in its confrontation with the Soviet Union.)
Israel faces a bigger "terrorist threat" than the US, but it is
still a pretty marginal concern. Hezbollah's activities on Israel's
northern borders were an occasional nuisance, but until Israel's quite
deliberate over-reaction to its hostage-seizure operation on 12 July --
bombing targets all across Lebanon -- it had not fired rockets at Israeli
towns in years. Hezbollah had the capability to do that, so Israel was
theoretically vulnerable (though not very, since the rockets hardly ever
hit anyone), but it wasn't actually doing it.
In one sense, this war is an absurd attempt to eliminate that last
little vulnerability by grossly disproportionate means. In a more serious
sense, it is driven by the Israeli military's desire to "reestablish
deterrence": that is, to demonstrate anew that Israel can respond with
grossly disproportionate violence to any provocation, spreading death and
destruction far beyond the location of the original offence.
But that is another way of saying that it wants to show that
everybody else in the region is completely vulnerable to its power,
completely insecure. There is no stability in such a relationship, as the
past forty years have amply demonstrated, and in any case, this time
deterrence will not be reestablished. Israel is unable to eliminate
Hezbollah, and its attack merely highlights the limitations of Israeli
military power when deployed against non-state opponents.
Now come to the United States and its flailing pseudo-diplomatic
attempts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons -- or, indeed, its
equally ham-fisted attempts to force North Korea to give up the nukes it
claims to have already built. The tactics it has adopted are as ignorant of
the opposing side's psychology as they are revealing of its own.
The US has made blocking the nuclear weapons ambitions of these two
countries an absolute priority in its foreign policy, because it will no
longer accept even the slightest vulnerability to countries or forces it
sees as hostile. In these two cases, it may well be an achievable goal,
since their putative bombs are probably just bargaining chips. You can't
be sure, but it's certainly worth finding out.
The US is not negotiating with 75 million Iranians or 25 million
North Koreans. It is (or rather, it should be) negotiating with the senior
clerics around Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, and with the senior people
around Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il in Pyongyang, both of whom are primarily
interested in regime survival, not in nuclear weapons. Yet the Bush
administration seems oblivious to the fact that THEY feel insecure.
America's vulnerability is tiny; theirs is almost total. It would
be worthwhile to offer both of them a commitment that the US will stop
trying to overthrow their regimes, and leave their fate in the hands of
their own peoples, in return for renouncing their nuclear weapons
ambitions. It worked with Libya's Gaddafy, after all. What is truly
astonishing is that this approach has simply not been tried with either
North Korea or Iran.
_____________________________________
To shorten to 725 words, omit paragraphs 4 and 11. ("The enemy...war"; and
"The US...finding out")
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles
are published in 45 countries.
Link to Gwynne Dyer's columns
http://www.gwynnedyer.net/articles2006.htm
Seeking Invulnerability
By Gwynne Dyer
The three most ill-considered (and probably doomed) political
enterprises on the international political scene today are the Israeli
assault on Lebanon, the US campaign to force Iran to renounce its alleged
nuclear weapons programme, and the similar campaign that has been mounted
against North Korea. What common theme unites these three enterprises?
The quest for invulnerability for one side, at the expense of total
vulnerability for the other.
Between 1945 and about 1970, the United States went through one of
the most difficult intellectual and emotional transitions in history. The
US began that period as the home of almost half the world's surviving
industrial capacity and the sole possessor of the ultimate weapon, the
atomic bomb. It was unchallengeable and invulnerable. Yet by 1970 it was
ready to concede nuclear weapons parity to the Soviet Union, an openly
hostile totalitarian state, and was negotiating arms-control agreements
that limited missile numbers but guaranteed the Soviets the ability to
destroy the United States.
That was logical and necessary, because you couldn't stop the
Russians from building more and bigger nuclear weapons. America's military
thinkers had grasped the essential fact that no number of nuclear weapons
on their side, however large, could stop an enemy with the ability to
deliver even a few hundred nukes from effectively destroying their country.
The enemy would also be destroyed by US retaliation, of course, so
let's work with that fact. Let us stabilise the US-Soviet relationship by
accepting this unavoidable situation of mutual vulnerability -- Mutual
Assured Destruction (MAD), as one critic of the policy named it -- and even
enshrining it in international treaties. It made good strategic sense, and
it may well have saved the world from a nuclear war.
Accepting America's vulnerability was so emotionally repugnant that
many leading politicians and generals spent the rest of their careers
promoting new technologies like "Star Wars" that they hoped might restore
US invulnerability, but most of the US political and military elite had the
wisdom and maturity to support the policy. America could use their like
today. So could Israel.
Israel's period of invulnerability began later, after the 1973 war,
and has lasted far longer. No combination of Arab armies can defeat Israel
in war, or even inflict major casualties on it. And should Israeli
generals ever prove so incompetent that Arab armies did make a little
headway, Israel still has its regional nuclear weapons monopoly forty years
after developing the things. (America lost its own nuclear monopoly after
only four years in its confrontation with the Soviet Union.)
Israel faces a bigger "terrorist threat" than the US, but it is
still a pretty marginal concern. Hezbollah's activities on Israel's
northern borders were an occasional nuisance, but until Israel's quite
deliberate over-reaction to its hostage-seizure operation on 12 July --
bombing targets all across Lebanon -- it had not fired rockets at Israeli
towns in years. Hezbollah had the capability to do that, so Israel was
theoretically vulnerable (though not very, since the rockets hardly ever
hit anyone), but it wasn't actually doing it.
In one sense, this war is an absurd attempt to eliminate that last
little vulnerability by grossly disproportionate means. In a more serious
sense, it is driven by the Israeli military's desire to "reestablish
deterrence": that is, to demonstrate anew that Israel can respond with
grossly disproportionate violence to any provocation, spreading death and
destruction far beyond the location of the original offence.
But that is another way of saying that it wants to show that
everybody else in the region is completely vulnerable to its power,
completely insecure. There is no stability in such a relationship, as the
past forty years have amply demonstrated, and in any case, this time
deterrence will not be reestablished. Israel is unable to eliminate
Hezbollah, and its attack merely highlights the limitations of Israeli
military power when deployed against non-state opponents.
Now come to the United States and its flailing pseudo-diplomatic
attempts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons -- or, indeed, its
equally ham-fisted attempts to force North Korea to give up the nukes it
claims to have already built. The tactics it has adopted are as ignorant of
the opposing side's psychology as they are revealing of its own.
The US has made blocking the nuclear weapons ambitions of these two
countries an absolute priority in its foreign policy, because it will no
longer accept even the slightest vulnerability to countries or forces it
sees as hostile. In these two cases, it may well be an achievable goal,
since their putative bombs are probably just bargaining chips. You can't
be sure, but it's certainly worth finding out.
The US is not negotiating with 75 million Iranians or 25 million
North Koreans. It is (or rather, it should be) negotiating with the senior
clerics around Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, and with the senior people
around Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il in Pyongyang, both of whom are primarily
interested in regime survival, not in nuclear weapons. Yet the Bush
administration seems oblivious to the fact that THEY feel insecure.
America's vulnerability is tiny; theirs is almost total. It would
be worthwhile to offer both of them a commitment that the US will stop
trying to overthrow their regimes, and leave their fate in the hands of
their own peoples, in return for renouncing their nuclear weapons
ambitions. It worked with Libya's Gaddafy, after all. What is truly
astonishing is that this approach has simply not been tried with either
North Korea or Iran.
_____________________________________
To shorten to 725 words, omit paragraphs 4 and 11. ("The enemy...war"; and
"The US...finding out")
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles
are published in 45 countries.
Link to Gwynne Dyer's columns
http://www.gwynnedyer.net/articles2006.htm
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