Dead Patriots Society

As all countries with nuclear weapons know, such weapons are best suited for deterring attack by another nuclear power, rather than for an unprovoked attack which would invite massive retaliation. 

America and Israel do not attack countries with nuclear weapons. That alone explains why Iran might want some. Yet, it’s an article of faith in Washington that Iran must not get the bomb, because it would want to nuke Israel. Nevermind that Israel would then blow Iran to smithereens.

Iranian leaders enjoy their political power and privileges as much as any gang of elites, and are probably no more inclined to forfeit those things and commit suicide by attacking Israel, a well endowed nuclear power.

It is implausible that Iran posed any imminent threat. And even supposing Senator Lindsey Graham is right that Iran was close to having eleven nuclear weapons, it does not follow that Iran could then hold the preeminent power hostage.

This was a war of choice, and such wars should be costly, the better to deter their kind. In the best circumstances, the instigators are stripped of power by their own people. But usually, it falls on other countries to first impose a high cost in blood and treasure.

No matter what anyone thinks of Iranian leaders or others aiding its retaliation, Iran is doing its job. It is balancing against preponderant power. Though the warfare is asymmetrical due to the power discrepancy between the two sides, the vast majority of deaths are caused by America and Israel.

Our longstanding commitment to ensure Israel’s military dominance in its neighborhood has meant two things. First, Israel feels no urgency to end its injustices (and worse) against the Palestinians, and continues to take Palestinian land. Two, Israel imagines it can enhance its security by attacking weaker enemies. This time it dragged us along.

As many have said, Hamas is an idea, which Israel cannot eradicate by force. But Israel can undermine Hamas politically by finally agreeing to the establishment of a secure, sovereign Palestinian state. There will have to be a sacrifice: Israel will have to relocate 700,000-plus Jewish settlers from the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel would still retain 78 percent of the land “from the river to the sea”, historical Palestine.

Israelis will only know security when Palestinians do as well. Were it not for the power imbalance between Israel and the Palestinians, they might have hashed out a two-state arrangement years ago. But that imbalance has meant that peace has not been pressing enough to compel Israel  to consider terms that would be acceptable to the Palestinians.

As an aside, were the power imbalance reversed, the Palestinians might be no more accommodating of Jewish aspirations for peace and security. Power corrupts us all.

As for Israel’s attempt to vanquish all its enemies, such cannot prevent, and will likely speed, the restoration of a rough balance of power in the region. The late political theorist Kenneth Waltz explained why.

In 1959, in Man, the State and War, Waltz wrote that “A balance of power may exist because some countries consciously make it the end of their policies, or it may exist because of the quasi-automatic reactions of some states to the drive for ascendancy of other states….The balance of power is not so much imposed by statesmen on events as it is imposed by events on statesmen.” In 1979, in Theory of International Politics, Waltz methodically developed his theory of structural realism.  Of balancing, he wrote:

“From the theory, one predicts that states will engage in balancing behavior, whether or not balanced power is the end of their acts.  From the theory, one predicts a strong tendency toward balance in the system.  The expectation is not that a balance, once achieved, will be maintained, but that a balance, once disrupted, will be restored in one way or another.“

The idea of an unintended structure hovering above states competing for security, at once mindless yet capable of derailing the plans of any of them, is not easily grasped.  It seems axiomatic that any social system must be reducible to the qualities and preferences of the actors that comprise it.  Seeing the world as merely the sum of its parts, Americans like to populate it with good and evil actors to explain wars.  But this morally simple approach misses structural forces.

From our perspective, our motives may be noble; that aside, other states with competing interests cannot abide unchecked power. 

A realist knows that one thing you can’t do with a bayonet is sit on it, and likewise a preponderant state will always find some worthy use of its power.  Humans, usually oblivious to structural or unconscious forces influencing them, conjure plenty of reasons to act as they do.  But how causal are self-serving explanations?  Notwithstanding that human motives and actions appear tightly conjoined, it is a safe bet that deeper forces often drive our actions.

Structural realism accounts for the ironic outcomes of international politics; from the perspective of the “system” itself, there is nothing ironic. The boomerang effects of preeminent power contribute to system stability.  From a systemic perspective, actors that frustrate the projection of American and Israeli power are doing their job, regardless of what anyone assumes about their values.