Krauthammer’s “Holocaust Declaration”
- 04.11.2008 - 6:48 PMPut me down, first and foremost, as a Charles Krauthammer fan. But his latest column in my opinion is lacking in the unsparing analytic rigor that typically characterizes his work, and it is for this reason that I take a harsher view of the piece than does Gordon. Krauthammer writes that when Iran goes nuclear,
we shall have to rely on deterrence to prevent the mullahs, some of whom are apocalyptic and messianic, from using nuclear weapons. …
How to create deterrence? The way John Kennedy did during the Cuban missile crisis. President Bush should issue the following declaration, adopting Kennedy’s language while changing the names of the miscreants:
It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack upon Israel by Iran, or originating in Iran, as an attack by Iran on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon Iran.
This should be followed with a simple explanation: “As a beacon of tolerance and as leader of the free world, the United States will not permit a second Holocaust to be perpetrated upon the Jewish people.”
But the italicized declaration above would do very little to guarantee the promise that follows it — that the U.S. “will not permit a second Holocaust.” To state the obvious, a U.S. second strike would not prevent an Iranian first strike — only react to it once it has happened. What are the chances that Iran would attempt to nuke Israel? Well, who knows: the Soviet Union, however rapacious and barbaric, at least tended to act in favor of national self-preservation, whereas the mullahs — it is something they brag about — have no such conception of self-preservation. As Bernard Lewis has said about the regime, “mutually assured destruction is not a deterrent factor, but rather an inducement.” Krauthammer hints at the messianic and apocalyptic nature of the prevailing Iranian ideology, but gives the unpredictable — or suicidally predictable — nature of Iranian behavior very little weight in his analysis.
Two other major objections: it is very well for the United States to place Israel under its nuclear umbrella, but it will also be true that Iran will place its allies under its nuclear umbrella. During the Cold War, mutually-assured destruction did not prevent Soviet adventurism in many corners of the world, and likewise during a U.S.-Iran Cold War, an American second-strike pledge would not prevent a similar adventurism on the part of Iran’s many allies.
In other words, the recent wars we have witnessed would continue, except that Hezbollah and Hamas would be backed by a nuclear patron. What if Iran instructs Hezbollah to send rockets raining down on northern Israel and then threatens nuclear retaliation should Israel respond with a ground war in Lebanon? Will the Holocaust Declaration have any relevance to such a scenario? Of course not. It only becomes relevant after Tel Aviv is in smoldering ruins. Some comfort.
Which leads to the final point. This is the question of whether Iran, upon acquiring a nuclear weapon, would need to actually launch an ICBM at Israel to destroy the country, or whether it could attempt to pick it apart through a relentless campaign of terror wars launched by its “non-state actor” proxies. Please pardon me for quoting something on this subject that I wrote previously:
The Jewish state already has a problem in the number of its citizens who tire of the warfare, terrorism, and Arab hatred that are regular features of life in Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis live abroad, many permanently, because they seek a “normal life,” and many Jews will never immigrate to Israel exactly because of the absence of such a life. All of this is only in the face of Palestinian and Hezbollah terrorists who kill with crude weapons. Now imagine those groups with the support of a nuclear patron. Imagine daily life in Israel conducted under the constant threat — the Iranians would surely take every opportunity to remind Israelis — of nuclear annihilation.
The Iranians are probably smart enough to know that if they’re patient, nothing so dramatic as nuclear war will be necessary. Simply by possessing a nuclear capability and regularly threatening to use it or supply it to its proxies, Iran will accomplish the psychological and economic attrition of Israel. This goal will be achieved without firing a shot — or at least without full-scale war.
Krauthammer’s column is intended as an attempt at envisioning a U.S. security strategy that would protect Israel in an Iranian nuclear era. Its failure to present a plausible scenario for doing so should underscore the importance of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons in the first place.
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April 11th, 2008 at 7:21 PM
Krauthammer is thinking along the line of Morris who speculated that Iran will nuke when they get the chance - I suspect probably as a result of an Israeli response to Hizbullah hostility. Israel wont survive the attack but will cripple Iran in the response. The US/EU wont do anything after the event other than pick up the Jewish survivors and relocate them to the US. The US wont nuke Iran because they will be more concerned about Int’l reaction to their actions than to what has happened to Israel - esp. if someone like Obama gets into power.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:15 PM
noah,
i made exactly this argument in another thread here on this subject. i also added that it was for this reason that israel’s failure in the lebanon war to debilitate hezbollah and its reluctance to debilitate hamas in response to the rockets (olmert has just given a speech in which he says he’ll ask for the permission of the int’l community to deal a blow to hamas) go much beyond “they lived to fight another war”: they put the existence of israel at risk.
those with any notion that the west, including the US will go into nuclear war for the sake of jews ought to have his head examined. what they will do is what they did in reaction to the first holocaust: publicly regret it and privately sigh in relief, thinking they’re off the jihad hook.
but at whom will the 6000km missiles with nuke heads be directed once israel is no more? and what kind of power will iran have after they used their nukes? and what will they do with this power? nobody seems to think about that.
oao
http://fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com/
YbA,
I would not be so certain that the US will relocate survivors, even if any remain, which is not certain.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:31 PM
oao
US Jews have enough political influence to get their surviving brethren relocated to the US in the face of such a catastrophe. What’s the option? Leaving them to a newly constructed state run by the Palestinian diaspora from Lebanon?
April 11th, 2008 at 8:35 PM
The comparison between Iran and the Soviet Union is in fact much more apt than many analysts recognize, and the lessons of Cold War deterrence actually apply very well to the Iranian situation. I explain in detail here.
April 11th, 2008 at 9:56 PM
At this point we should give every Jewish Israeli a green card and a plane ticket to New York.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:36 PM
Charles, that would be a little too late to be much help for Israel, wouldn’t it. I think knowing these lunatics mullahs in Iran are in a hurry to get their 72 virgins, we should hasten them on their way. Targetted assassination BEFORE a nuclear launch by Iran would prevent Israeli deaths…and innocent Iranians from being vaporized in a retaliatory strike.
A stitch in time saves nine.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:40 PM
If Obama and his Secy of State Jimmy Carter get into office, there won’t be any Israel left to worry about.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:46 PM
Once nuclear weapons are involved a credible threat is the same as an attack. Achmedinejad’s words have already granted Israel the moral right to take whatever action it deems prudent to eliminate the possibility that he can carry out his threat.
That said, one cause for belief that deterrence can work is that I’ve yet to hear of a Mullah or an Imam or a Sheikh turning himself into a suicide bomb, and I’ve also never heard of one of them outfitting one of his sons or daughters with a bomb vest.
April 11th, 2008 at 11:41 PM
It’s really not that complicated. Nuclear deterrence is not a situation you choose voluntarily. We are now entering oner of the most dangerous periods in modern history, when nuclear weapons are spreading to increasingly unstable and irresponsible governments. Couple that with terrorists whose only regret after murdering thousands is that they could not murder more innocent people, and you have quite a brave new world. It is possible that deterrence may work. But how much are you willing to stake on that proposition given the consequences of being wrong? I guess it comes down to one’s conception of human nature. For someone like Bill Clinton who tended to project rational motives on irrational people (his “solution” to addressing the growing extremism in the Islamic world was trying to resolve the Israel/Palestinian dispute, and even there in microcosm his view of what motivated each antagonist was ridiculously myopic), this was a recipe for doing nothing, unless we are willing to describe reaching a worthless accord with North Korea a positive step. However can the rest of us afford to be that naive? Leadership does not mean doing what is easy or popular in the short term. It means doing what has to be done and leaving the ultimate judgment to history, not politics. On that point, as an example, does anyone think that Saddam’s Iraq, presuming the Iraq war didn’t occur, would not eventually have joined Iran in its (to adopt the CIA’s logic) “purely civilian” uranium enrichment endeavors, or better still participated in the nuclear black market? To contemplate this simple thought out loud is to get shouted down, as is contemplating the actual dangers that a nuclear Iran presents. Yet after all the shouting, pandering and invective the danger still remains.
April 12th, 2008 at 1:53 AM
I happen to be skeptical that the mullahs will be the first ruling class in history to volunteer themelves and the bulk of their countrymen as human sacrifices for a greater good. So, by implication, is Bernard Lewis, who, while alleging the utter futility of MAD in this context, has also opposed an attack on Iran, preferring that Western militaries loiter pending internal regime change there.
I am also skeptical that the immediacy of war and the distant retiring of peace are the primary culprits in Israel’s malaise — forgive the Carterism — which I attribute, ironically, to Israel’s stubborn if uneven material success and increasingly individualist ethos. Mobilizing such a population, let alone competing for Diaspora loyalty with hyper-libertarian Western societies even better at ensuring a comfortable and independent life, is a formidable challenge, though not an impossible one.
That noted, there is ample reason, amply discussed on this site, to cripple Iran’s capabilities, and the sooner the better. And not just to make life easier for Israel, but to slow, if not arrest, the most dangerous, destabilizing and anti-American trend in international politics since the death of Stalin. I refer to the malign and layered confluence of competing jihads in parallel with resurgent, competing Russian and Chinese imperialisms.