Following President Obama's strong renunciation of "containment" and his expression of willingness to use military force as a last resort to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, some on the left continue to oppose any threat to use the military option. Leading this approach is Fareed Zakaria, who recently on his CNN program, characterized the Obama policy as "a serious error," and called instead for a "robust policy of containment and deterrence."
But the policy that Zakaria is proposing is anything but robust. To the contrary, it is a call for inaction. It presumed that Iran will be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, but that they will be deterred from actually using them by the threat of nuclear retaliation. Zakaria points to the fact that deterrence succeeded in preventing war between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as between India and Pakistan. He claims that each side was effectively deterred by the threat of mutually assured destruction. He says it will work equally well with Iran.
Let us pause for a moment to understand precisely what a policy of deterrence entails. Any such policy is based on the promise that if one side launches a nuclear attack, the other side will retaliate with an equally devastating nuclear attack, thus assuring the destruction of both societies and the deaths of millions of innocent civilians. The first question therefore is whether the United States would actually be willing to retaliate against a nuclear attack on Israel by dropping nuclear bombs on Tehran, killing millions of its civilian inhabitants. The second question is whether any civilized country--the United States or Israel--should be willing to kill millions of Iranian civilians because their leaders made a decision to use nuclear weapons against Israel or the United States. The third question--and the one never asked by advocates of deterrence--is whether it would be legal, under the laws of war, to target millions of civilians in a retaliatory nuclear attack.
These are the kinds of questions that Fareed Zakaria and his dovish colleagues refuse to ask. And the reason they refuse to ask these hard questions is precisely because we know the answers they would give: They would be categorically opposed to any retaliatory attack that targeted civilians in a tit-for-tat implementation of a mutually assured destruction policy of deterrence. If you don't believe me, ask him!
As to the legality of nuclear deterrence, the International Court of Justice issued a decision in 1996, in a case challenging the lawfulness of using, or threatening to use, nuclear weapons. The majority decision declined "to pronounce...on the practice known as 'the policy of deterrence'." It did rule unanimously, however, that any "threat or use of nuclear weapons" must "be compatible with the requirements of the international law applicable in armed conflict, particularly those of the principles and rules of international humanitarian law..." These rules, of course, generally forbid the targeting of civilian population centers and require proportionality even in the bombing of military targets. Since nuclear weapons are, by their nature, virtually incapable of destroying military targets without also inflicting countless civilian casualties, it would seem to follow that they could not be used except against remote military targets, such as ships and submarines on the high seas, or armies in isolated deserts or mountains. In a divided vote, the court ruled that:
the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict...
However, in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.
In other words, it would be unlawful for the United States to threaten or use nuclear weapons as a deterrent, since its "very survival" would not be at stake, but it might be lawful for Israel to do so because it is a small state whose very survival would, in fact, be at stake were it to be attacked by nuclear weapons.
Menachem Begin, the Israeli Prime Minister who ordered the preventive attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981, expressly renounced mutually assured destruction as a policy. He said that Israeli "morality" would never permit a retaliatory attack against an Iraqi city: "The children of Baghdad are not our enemy."
A preventive attack, on the other hand, is always directed against a military target. Only one person -- a nuclear technician -- was killed in the attack Begin authorized.
It would appear to be ironic that Zakaria, and others who purport to be "doves," would favor a mutually assured destruction policy that threatens the deaths of millions, over a preventive policy that targets military nuclear facilities. But it is not at all ironic, since such doves would be against actually carrying out the threat that is central to any credible policy of deterrence. For them, deterrence is a bluff -- a hollow threat and the Iranians would see right through it.
That's why President Obama is correct in renouncing containment and insisting that he isn't bluffing when he says Iran will not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, even if it takes a surgical military strike to stop them.
I am not here arguing in favor of a preventive attack on Iran at this time. I am arguing against reliance on a policy of deterrence and containment, because I don't believe it will work in relation to Iran, Israel and the United States.
What if deterrence and containment didn't work, and Iran were to fire nuclear rockets at Israeli cities? Those who now advocate robust deterrence -- instead of surgical prevention -- would simply say to the remaining Israelis: "Whoops. We were wrong. Sorry. We'll build you a new Holocaust Museum."
Iran has the know how and the means, and may already have assembled a few nukes.
Israel would be stupid to attack Iran...
nukes..
In other words, you belong to the 19% of the Isr. community who favor w*a r, and not the 81% (based on a recent poll), but you want USA to do it (start another w*r) with her soldiers/blood, money, and political expense for a very small minority which you belong to.
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Only the unwise and those with selfish (or extremist) personal issues and/or financial interests, try to push people & countries into the the path of foolish and inhuman wars
Too bad HP has buried this article.
What a fear mongering article without any solid facts to speak of, purely a Zionism 101 article!
What a load of hypocritical rubbish! On one hand you are actively gagging for a "pre-emptive" strike on Iran and on the other you boast about your non-existent civility which might stop you from responding to a highly improbable nuclear attack from Iran's side.
Mr. Dershowitz, if Israel were to launch 50 thermonuclear bombs at the major population centers of Iran as it has implicity threatend, would that not also kill millions of innocent civilians in the region by horrible radiation sickness from the radioactive fallout?
Mr. Zakaria may not be willing to endorse a retaliatory nuclear strike but he is not a politician and will never be elected head of any nuclear state. The electorate of any nuclear country will never vote for someone who publically de-fangs the M.A.D. policy by saying they wouldn't retaliate. Could you imagine if someone running for President of the United States said that he wouldn't retaliate if a country managed to strike one or more of our cities with a nuclear weapon?
And as for Israel, it conducts air strikes into civilian areas when they feel they are threatened by rocket fire coming from those areas. When civilians die as a result, Israel blame the terrorists for putting the rocket launchers in civilian areas. So why wouldn't Israel use the same rationale and blame the Iranian government for the inevitable result of mass Iranian casualties? Does Mr. Dershowitz believe Israeli leaders were bluffing when they crafted the so-called "Samson option" which is in itself a policy of deterrence and the reason Israel possesses nuclear weapons in the first place?