{"id":264,"date":"2008-04-14T18:24:26","date_gmt":"2008-04-14T22:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/mesh\/2008\/04\/balance_of_terror\/"},"modified":"2008-04-23T15:39:53","modified_gmt":"2008-04-23T19:39:53","slug":"balance_of_terror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/2008\/04\/balance_of_terror\/","title":{"rendered":"Balance of terror"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Alan Dowty<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

So the focus shifts to deterrence. Both Charles Krauthammer (here<\/a>) and Zev Chafets (here<\/a>) hold out little hope for international efforts to block Iran getting the bomb, or for military action to that end (though Chafets suggests that Israel might be able “in the best case” to weaken and delay Iran’s program). <\/span>As a wake-up call this is justified: the sanctions are pathetic and the military options are dismal.<\/p>\n

It is too early to give up completely; international pressure has slowed the program down, and the Iranians are still years from possession of a significant amount of fissionable material (which is why the apparent hiatus in weapons development is meaningless). Dragging out the program gives more time for moderating trends within Iran. But it makes sense at this stage to ask how a nuclearized Iran, guided by apocalyptic notions, might be deterred.<\/p>\n

Krauthammer offers the Berlin model of extended deterrence. Extended deterrence in the Cold War setting had two dimensions: the threat of nuclear retaliation to protect non-nuclear allies, and the threat of nuclear retaliation in response to an overwhelming conventional attack. Kennedy’s pledge on Berlin involved both. Since the United States could not actually prevent Soviet bloc forces from occupying the Berlin enclave, the answer was to threaten a “full retaliatory response” upon the Soviet Union itself. In truth, there was always an irrational side to this posture: would the United States actually sacrifice tens or hundreds of millions of American lives to defend a city that would doubtless be also destroyed in a full-scale nuclear exchange? <\/span>Fortunately, this was never tested.<\/p>\n

The suggested “Holocaust Declaration” is in some respects more credible. <\/span>Krauthammer proposes that it apply only to a nuclear<\/em> attack on Israel, and as he points out there is little fear\u2014for now\u2014of Iranian retaliation against the United States itself. On the other hand, Israel is not Berlin, and it is far from clear that any U.S. government would feel the need to reinforce a deterrence that is already in place: the certainty of a massive Israeli response to any nuclear attack. Chafets is correct: the key is deterrence by Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n
MESH Updater:<\/strong> Read more MESH discussion on deterring Iran in this thread<\/a> and this thread<\/a>.
\n<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

If an Iranian government would not be deterred by the likelihood of casualties in the tens of millions (as calculated<\/a> recently by Anthony Cordesman), then what additional impact would a U.S. pledge of retaliation have? The issue of vulnerability to a first strike, eliminating Israel’s retaliatory force, is raised\u2014but it will be decades, if ever, before Iranian forces could conceivably carry out such an attack, and Israel is already moving to protect these forces.<\/p>\n

Nor should we forget that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East is already a reality: chemical and biological weapons are already a part of the equation between Israel and Syria, for example. A Middle East “balance of terror” already exists. It is not the world that we prefer, but it may be the world we have to live with and find ways to stabilize.<\/p>\n

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Alan Dowty So the focus shifts to deterrence. Both Charles Krauthammer (here) and Zev Chafets (here) hold out little hope for international efforts to block Iran getting the bomb, or for military action to that end (though Chafets suggests that Israel might be able “in the best case” to weaken and delay Iran’s program). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1620,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2268,2354,2306,2361,622,2239,2223],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-garfinkle","category-alan-dowty","category-barry-rubin","category-harvey-sicherman","category-iran","category-israel","category-nuclear"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1620"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}